SOFIA (Bulgaria), June 15 (SeeNews) – Bulgaria will relaunch a 250 million levs ($136.2 million/128 million euro) tender for the construction of Zheleznitsa tunnel on Struma motorway at the end of June or beginning of July, a government official said on Thursday.
The tender will be divided into three subcontracts, Iveta Koleva, head of project management department at the Road Infrastructure Agency said during the annual Strategic Infrastructure and Investments conference held in Sofia.
Two subcontracts will be awarded for the construction of a total of 2.4 km of adjacent roads before and after the tunnel. The third contract will be awarded for the construction of the 2-km long tunnel, which will be Bulgaria's longest road tunnel.
The initial tender procedure for the construction of Zheleznitsa tunnel was cancelled in April. The National Company Strategic Infrastructure Projects has misinformed the candidates that they could place offers higher than the indicative value of the project, Pirin Penchev, the head of Bulgaria’s Road Infrastructure Agency, said at the time.
Another reason for the cancellation of the tender was the missing technical offer of one of the participants in the tender.
Seventeen candidates had placed bids in the initial tender procedure.
The Struma motorway, with a total length of 173.28 km, is part of pan-European transport Corridor IV, linking Bulgaria's capital Sofia to Kulata checkpoint on the border with Greece. Its construction is divided into four sections, of which three have already been completed: Dolna Dikanya – Dupnitsa, Dupnitsa – Blagoevgrad, and Sandanski-Kulata, while the section Blagoevgrad-Sandanski, which includes the Zheleznitsa tunnel, remains to be built.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)