Profit took a dive, too, going to RON1.4 million from RON41 million in 2014.
“It was a slow year because our business was frozen due to the tender held by Metrorex (Bucharest subway operator i.e.). We did not take new orders, we did not sign new contracts while waiting to see how the tender goes,” said Valer Blidar, one of the few Romanian entrepreneurs who own plants built during Romania’s industrialization drive in the seventies and eighties.
Astra Vagoane Arad expects this year’s results to be about the same as in 2014, considering the tenders to buy streetcars to be held in Romania, which it hopes to win.
Astra Vagoane Calatori participated together with Alstom Transport in the tender held by Metrorex at the end of 2014, whose winner was a Spanish company because one of the requirements of the tender was for bidders to have EUR340 million revenue on average in the past three years, which the Romanian company did not.
Alstom and Astra Vagoane Calatori at the end of last March challenged the result of the tender for an almost EUR440 million contract to buy 51 new trains for Line 5 Drumul Taberei-Pantelimon in Bucharest, which Spain’s CAF won.
The tender is now under investigation by the National Anticorruption Directorate among others. (EUR1=RON4.4957)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)