Fresh Appeal Foils Tender for Bulgaria's Road Toll System

Bulgaria's outgoing Regional Development Minister Lilyana Pavlova. File photo, BGNES

The controversial decision to restart a tender procedure for the design and construction of Bulgaria's road toll system has been blocked by yet another appeal, officials have confirmed.

The tender will be brought to a halt, Focus News Agency quotes outgoing Regional Development Minister Lilyana Pavlova as saying.

President-elect Rumen Radev, who earlier spoke critically of the tender, has been informed about this latest update, Pavlova has added.

Radev has been having a dispute with the road agency over its decision not to stick to a blanket ban on conducting tenders until the cabinet leaves office at the end of January.

But a claim by TollNet, a Czech company, will now freeze the tender for another time. The development has occurred several times since the first launch of the procurement procedure in April of last year.

TollNet, according to the competition watchdog CPC, has argued the deadline for submitting offers (between December 29 and January 05) is too narrow and disadvantages some potential participants.

Speaking to Focus, Pavlova has defended the earlier move to relaunch the tender, recalling that was done after a court rejected the previous appeal, giving officials "the right to continue with this old public procurement."

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