CFR Marfa has asked 256 million lei (EUR57.9 million) to transport CE Oltenia’s coal, while the second bidder demanded RON255 million.
Both offers will be analyzed and a winner will be selected sometime next month, the people close to the matter said.
Contacted by Mediafax, GFR confirmed its participation in the auction, but declined to give more details.
“GFR cannot reveal the value of our offer, but we can say that the price lodged by the association we were a part of was the lowest,” GFR told Mediafax.
Two other companies were part of the consortium that included GFR, namely Unifertrans and Servtrans Invest, CE Oltenia said later Friday.
Initially scheduled for January, the auction to transport CE Oltenia’s coal was postponed after GFR’s owner Gruia Stoica was detained by anticorruption prosecutors for allegedly bribing a lawyer to get insider information on CFR Marfa’s bid.
Stoica was later placed under house arrest, pending trial.
CFR Marfa and GFR are the largest rail freight transporters in Romania. (EUR1=RON4.4164)