August 17 (SeeNews) - Greece's Aktor and a tie-up of Italy's Todini Costruzioni Generali and its affiliate Todini Bulgaria have filed complaints against the ranking of offers in Bulgaria's 250 million levs ($145.6 million/128 million euro) tender for construction of Zheleznitsa tunnel and adjacent sections of Struma motorway, the Bulgarian competition authority said.
Aktor's complaint was filed on Thursday, while Todini submitted its complaint on Friday, the anti-trust regulator announced in two separate notices.
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.
On August 6, Bulgaria's Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) said it has ranked first the 185.4 million levs ($109.8 million/94.8 million euro) offer of local consortium AM Struma Tunnel for the construction of the motorway tunnel in southwestern Bulgaria. AM Struma Tunnel tie-up comprises Bulgarian-based companies GP Group, Global Construction and Via-Plan, according to documents published by the government agency.
For the sections of the motorway adjacent to the two ends of the tunnel (Lot 1 and Lot 3 of the tender), RIA selected Zheleznitsa - North consortium and local construction company PST Group.
Zheleznitsa - North comprising local companies GBS Infrastrukturno Stroitelstvo, Glavbolgarstroy and Glavbolgarstroy International, won Lot 1 with an offer valued at 30 million levs. PST Group's offer for Lot 3 was priced at 18.4 million levs.
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)