site.btaFuture Sofia Airport Concessionaire to Be Required to Invest LV 600+ Mln and Build New Terminal

Sofia, June 29 (BTA) - The future concessionaire of Sofia Airport will be required to invest no less than 600 million euro throughout the concession period and to build a new passenger terminal. This transpired Friday from remarks by Transport Minister Ivaylo Moskovski at the government's weekly meeting on Wednesday as the government press office published a verbatim record from the meeting.

On Wednesday, the government decided to open a new procedure for selling a concession for Sofia Airport.

A concession award procedure was first opened in 2016. The government's idea then was to get 500 million leva pre-VAT or more in upfront concession royalties and use the money to repay BDZ's debts and purchase trains. The Socialists used every opportunity to slam the concession plans, as did the trade unions and the airport employees. The concession procedure was called off in 2017 by a caretaker government.

No details were made public by the government about the impending concession procedure and the Transport Minister explained that the procedure terms will become clear only when a call to tender is published in the official gazette of the EU in order to ensure level playing field for all potential bidders.

It transpires from the verbatim record that it is going to be an open bidding procedure. The price will have the most weight, 55 per cent, when the offers are assessed and the technical proposal will have 45 per cent weight.

The technical proposal will include a development plan, a business plan, a financial plan, a general strategy and traffic and cost estimates.

The bidders will be required to be operating at least one international airport with over 10 million passengers a year; to have a net worth of their assets of at least 200 million euro in each of the past three years; to have experience with financing one or more projects in the infrastructure sector, worth 400 million euro or more.

The annual concession royalties expected to each year of the concession shall be no less than 15 million leva pre-VAT or 10 per cent of teh revenue from all activities for the respective year (whichever is more).

Moskovski also said that the new procedure is fully based on analyses and draft agreements prepared by a consortium of the World Bank and the EBRD in their role as consultants, and is fully compliant with the EU rules on concessions and the new Bulgarian law on concessions.

In the transcript, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov hails the proposal for reopening the concession procedure.