Turkish construction firm Dogus Insaat ve Ticaret and the Metrotrace consortium were picked to build Sofia's second metro line, Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov said on July 22, as quoted by website zagrada.bg. The offers were picked based on the price offered, with the lowest bids awarded the contracts, zagrada.bg said.

Dogus Insaat, the construction subsidiary of Dogus group, one of Turkey's biggest privately-owned business conglomerates, offered the lowest price on the 3.8km stretch between Nadezhda flyover and Patriarh Evtimii Boulevard, which will have four stations. The company offered 329.1 million leva to build the stretch.

Metrotrace, a consortium of companies from the Bulgarian construction group Trace Holding, wuoold build the 2.6km stretch between Patriarh Evtimii and Cherni Vruh boulevards, with three stations, for 142 million leva.

The combined costs, at 471.1 million leva, are some 85.9 million less than the lowest prices offered in the first tender earlier this year, Borissov was quoted as saying.

The bulk of the funding - 185.1 million euro, or 362 million leva - would come from European Union structural funds under operational programme for transport, which means that it has to be approved by the European Commission. The rest of the money would come from the Sofia and central government budgets.

Unless other bidders file appeals filed within the next 10 days, the city hall would move to sign contracts with the firms involved, investor.bg quoted Borissov as saying.

Construction work could start as early as September, Borissov added, as quoted by zagrada.bg, and would have to be completed within 45 months, which means that the second line of the Sofia metro should become operational in mid-2012.

Source: zagrada.bg
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