The importance of awarding these contracts is even greater considering public investment has been low in the past year and fewer and fewer tenders held, thus putting pressure on the construction sector, already shaken by the slump in private investment. Construction sector dropped 5% in the first quarter.
“The contracts were awarded,” said Minister-delegate for Infrastructure Projects Dan Sova on Wednesday when ZF asked him for comment. He added he would ask his subordinates at Romania’s national company in charge of its highways and national roads CNADNR to issue a press release with the winners’ names. However, neither CNADNR nor the Department for Infrastructure Projects and Foreign Investments sent any news release.
Moreover, CNADNR did not reply to ZF’s request for a list of winners’ names and contract value. The public procurement website e-licitatie.ro, which should show to whom these contracts were awarded does not show anything, either.
The awarding of the contracts for the 100 kilometers of highway worth an estimated EUR900 million has been stuck for far too long in the bid evaluation phase and because of the very low funding available to infrastructure. This is the biggest set of contracts put up for tender in the last couple of years. In 2011, contracts for more than 180 kilometers of highway worth EUR1 billion were awarded after about two months of bid evaluation.
Once the winners revealed, petitions challenging them will most likely ensue, which means work on the construction sites might be postponed for the end of the summer or the fall.
The dozens of builders competing for the contracts for the 100 kilometers of highway include Romanian companies such as Spedition UMB, Teloxim Con, Straco Grup and foreign companies like Strabag (Austria), FCC Construccion (Spain) and Pizzarotti (Italy).
The highways put up for tender last summer are Lugoj-Deva segment 2 (28.6 kilometers), Lugoj-Deva segment 3 (21.1 kilometers), Lugoj-Deva segment 4 (22.1 kilometers), Timisoara-Lugoj segment 2 (26 kilometers) and Gilau-Nadaselu (8.7 kilometers). Only Gilau-Nadaselu has a winner so far, Spedition UMB and Tehnostrade. The two had also won Timisoara-Lugoj segment 2, but after other bidders challenged the win, CNADNR had to resume bid evaluation, writes Gandul newspaper.
The builders have not been informed of the tender results, either, although Sova says contracts have already been awarded.
“We haven’t been notified of the decision [about the tender results] yet,” said Paula Rys, Strabag representative.
On the other hand, the delay in announcing the contract winners made some of the bidders back out of the race.
“We gave up on renewing the deposit required to participate after it expired (three months) because our bid was somewhere in the middle, and we felt thought our position was not eligible. We deliberately left the tender,” says Florea Diaconu, the businessman who owns Bucharest-based builder Delta ACM 93.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)