July 5 (SeeNews) - The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) filed in parliament on Thursday a proposal to cancel a tender for awarding a 35-year concession contract for the operation of Sofia International Airport, according to data from parliament's website.
The tender was opened earlier on Thursday, according to a notice by the transport ministry published on the website of the Tenders Electronic Daily supplement to the Official Journal of the EU.
According to the tender notice, the total estimated value of the contract is 3.9 billion euro. The deadline for submitting offers is October 22.
BSP points to the airport's stable financial results and growing passenger traffic, along with an investment of over 900 million levs ($538.3 million/460.2 million euro) made in its infrastructure, as the main reasons to request a cancellation of the tender, a draft decision published on parliament's website shows.
BSP also expects that the concessionnaire will cut staff and increase airport charges.
In addition, BSP points out that Sofia Airport is a facility of strategic importance for the national security and operating it under a concession may have negative implications in this regard.
Last week, transport minister Ivaylo Moskovski said Sofia Airport's concessionaire will have to make an annual payment of 10% of the total revenue generated from the airport's operation, but not less than 15 million levs.
The concession fee will carry the highest weight in the procedure for selecting a concessionaire, of 55%. The remaining 45% will depend on the presented development plan, business plan, financing plan, general strategy, traffic estimates and capital expenditure.
The requirements for the potential candidates include having a net asset value of at least 200 million euro throughout the last three year and operating at least one international airport with an annual traffic of over 10 million passengers.
In June 2016, the transport ministry launched a tender for a 35-year Sofia Airport concession contract, seeking at least 550 million levs as a one-off upfront payment.
The tender was cancelled in April 2017 by the then caretaker government, which said that the concession woild lead to a rise in airport charges and a decline of passenger traffic.
After the current coalition government took office in May 2017, transport minister Ivaylo Moskovski said it intends to relaunch the tender and use the revenue from the concession to provide aid to indebted state-owned railways operator BDZ Holding.
At the time, German airport operator Fraport, which currently operates the Bulgarian coastal airports of Varna and Burgas, announced it was still very interested in winning a concession contract for operating Sofia Airport.
On Wednesday, the government decided to extend 103.7 million levs of reimbursable aid to BDZ Holding.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)