SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), October 7 (SeeNews) – Norway's Technor Energy, hired by Bosnia’s Serb Republic to build seven hydropower plants, said on Wednesday it will consider two consortia as potential subcontractors.
A consortium comprising Austrain builder Strabag and Croatia’s Ingra, and a consortium led by Croatia’s Konstruktor, have submitted valid documents and will be considered for selection, Technor Energy CEO Geir-Inge Sivertsen told SeeNews over the phone from his office in Tromsoe, Norway .
He added the company will make the selection in a month from now. Construction works are scheduled to start in May or June, 2010.
Two other bidders, Austria’s Alpine and Porr, will not be considered because they had submitted incomplete tender guarantees, Sivertsen said.
“This is a big project that will take around five years to complete,” he added.
Last month, Technor extended the deadline for the filing of tender documents to October 6 from September 15 without elaborating. Technor Energy is implementing the project under a concession arrangement with the government of Bosnia's Serb Republic.
Technor will invest in the construction of six power plants with a combined capacity of 74 megawatts, while the construction of the seventh power plant will be funded by Bosnian state-controlled power distributor Elektrodoboj.
The hydropower plants will be built between the Serb Republic's northern towns of Modrica and Doboj.
The total cost of the project is 200 million euro ($293.8 million), the government of the Serb Republic said in late 2008.
The Serb Republic is one of the two autonomous regions of post-war Bosnia, and the other is the Muslim-Croat Federation.
($=0.6808 euro)