Five companies have been invited by the Transport and Communications Ministry to participate in the tender for the construction of the second Bulgarian bridge over the Danube River.
The ministry invited to compete a joint venture between Germanys Hochtief, Spanish builder Obrascon Huarte Lain (OHL) and Spains FCC. A consortium between Frances Vinci and Bulgarias Glavbolgarstroi and Moststroi and another consortium led by the German Zublin, Austrias Alpine Mayreder and Frances Eiffel have also been invited to join the tender. The fifth invited bidder is a consortium of Frances Bouygues, the Bulgarian Transstroi Varna and Italys Rizzani de Eccher.
The project will connect the Bulgarian town of Vidin, in the north-west of the country, with the Romanian town of Kalafat, thus providing a second link over the Danube.
The bridge will have 1440m of roads and 2480m of railways. There will be a dual-track railway, a dual two-lane carriageway, a pedestrian strip and an emergency lane. The adjoining infrastructure is over 15km long and includes a new road linking the existing roads with the bridge and road junctures. The adjoining railway infrastructure is over 11.5km long.
The deadline for submitting bids is set at September 15 2006. As part of the procedure, Bulgaria has to hire a company to begin construction on the bridge, which should be ready by the end of 2009. The project will cost 236 million euro. A total of 70 million euro will be provided through loans from the European Investment Bank and another 60.7 million euro will come from financing by the Bulgarian Government.
In February 2005, Bulgaria and the European Commission signed a financial memorandum on the terms of an agreement under which the country will receive 70 million euro from the European Unions ISPA programme to build the bridge.
Germanys KfW has already provided a grant of two million euro and a loan of 18 million euro; Agence francaise de developpement provided a five million euro loan; and the EBRD lent 70 million euro. The Bulgarian Government has put up 60.8 million euro in co-financing. The total amount of money collected for the launch of the project is almost 226 million euro.
