October 29 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) said on Monday that it has signed a 30 million levs ($17.4 million/15.3 million euro) contract with a local tie-up for the construction of a section of Struma motorway of less than 1 kilometre, at the end of the planned Zheleznitsa tunnel.
The contract with the tie-up, comprising local companies GBS Infrastrukturno Stroitelstvo, Glavbolgarstroy and Glavbolgarstroy International, was signed on October 16, the government agency said in a notice.
The agency received seven offers in the public procurement procedure for awading the contract.
Last month, the road agency signed an 18.4 million levs contract with local PST Group for the construction of a 1.4-kilometre long section at the other end of Zheleznitsa tunnel.
The agency also picked AM Struma Tunnel tie-up, comprising Bulgarian-based companies GP Group, Global Construction and Via-Plan, to build the tunnel for 185.4 million levs.
However, the agency's decision to rank the offers was subsequently challenged before Bulgaria's Commission for Protection of Competition by Greece's Aktor and a tie-up of Italy's Todini Costruzioni Generali and its affiliate Todini Bulgaria. Aktor and Todini both submitted offers for Lot 2 of the tender, i.e. for the construction of the tunnel itself, but were disqualified in the pre-selection process.
The project benefits from EU financing under Operational Programme Transport and Transport Infrastructure 2014-2020. It must be completed by December 2023 in order to comply with the programme's requirements or Bulgaria might lose the financing.
The implementation of the project has been delayed by the cancellation of the previous two tenders for the construction of the tunnel.
The original tender procedure for the construction of the tunnel was cancelled in April 2017 because the company had misinformed the candidates that they could place offers higher than the indicative value of the project, the head of RIA said at the time.
Tendering for construction of Zheleznitsa tunnel was relaunched in September 2017 but was cancelled for a second time a month later due to changes in the technical criteria for the selection of offers.
The Struma motorway will link Bulgaria's capital Sofia to Kulata checkpoint on the border with Greece. Its construction has been divided into four sections, of which three have already been built.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)