site.btaTransport Ministry to Purchase 35 Trains under National Recovery Plan by Direct Negotiations

The Transport Ministry announced Thursday that it is calling off a public procurement procedure and is switching to a procedure of direct negotiations for purchase of 35 trains on funding from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. It said that it is moving to this kind of procedure "due to the specificities and complexity of the project for modernization of the railway rolling stock".

The Ministry opened a public procurement procedure on January 26, 2024 and said Thursday that the tender commission has found the technical specifications in the offers of the two tenderers to diverge from the project terms of reference regarding the timeframe for delivery, the certification and "other details".

Offers were submitted by the Czech Skoda Transportation and Pesa of Poland.

By a decision of Transport Minister Georgi Gvozdeikov of Thursday, the competitive procedure was called off and the Transport Ministry switches to direct contracting without prior announcement, as per Article 18, Para 1 Item 8 of the Public Procurement Act.

The Transport Minister is quoted as saying that the Ministry will invite to negotiations "a broad circle of participants so as to maximize competition". In order to ensure transparency, it will invite European Commission representatives to monitor the contracting process.