Serbian firm's appeal halts tender for Montenegro's Bar-Boljare motorway section design - report

At the end of January, Montenegro's state-run motorway operator Monteput opened a tender for the preliminary design of a 50-km section that would stretch from Andrijevica via Berane to Boljare, on the border with Serbia, with an estimated value of 5 million euro ($5.4 million).

In the following two months, however, Monteput amended the tender documentation, prompting one of the tender participants - Novi Sad-based AG Institute - to submit an appeal against the changes, daily Vijesti reported, citing information from Monteput.

With the changes, Monteput added a requirement for candidates to hold a licence for geological research projects and to have an experienced bridge engineer on their team, and changed the bid evaluation methodology.

The bidding deadline expired on March 18.

The tender procedure has been suspended until the commission for rights protection in public procurement procedures takes a decision on the appeal, according to the report.

The daily quoted Monteput sources according to which it can take the commission up to one month to decide whether to dismiss the appeal, or cancel the tender.

The Andrijevica-Boljare stretch is the third section of the 129-km Bar-Boljare motorway that Montenegro will build. In July 2022, it opened the first section of the motorway - the 41-km Smokovac-Matesevo stretch, which was built by China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC). The government in Podgorica plans to launch in June a tender for the construction of the second section - the 21-km Matesevo-Andrijevica stretch.

The Bar-Boljare motorway will link Montenegro's Adriatic port of Bar to the country's border with Serbia in the north. It is part of European transport Corridor XI which is a ferry/motorway corridor linking Italy's Bari to Romania's Bucharest via the port of Bar and Serbia's Belgrade.

($ = 0.921 euro)