Caransebeș main line is due to underestimated costs in the tender.
Transport Minister Sorin Grindeanu admitted on Friday in Timisoara that missing out on the 10 billion lei contracts to modernise the CFR Craiova – Caransebeș main line is due to underestimated costs in the tender. The procurement procedure will be relaunched quickly, after the approval of the new technical-economic indicators in the Government and without the risk of losing European funds from the 2021-2027 Transport Programme. The delay should be only 2 months, Grindeanu said (editor’s note: it is actually almost a year). In the tenders launched this spring, no constructor submitted bids for the contracts for the design and execution of modernisation works on the M 100 Craiova – Caransebeș.
“There are 6 extremely important lots on Caransebeș – Craiova, including for us on this route. (The Timișoara – Caransebeș line will be modernised through the NRRP. The 6 lots will be modernised through the Transport Programme. All these SFs – Feasibility Studies have been made and have been kept on hold at the Ministry of Transport or at the companies, before the price of materials. Naturally, the indicators are no longer the same as before the pandemic or the war in Ukraine. It’s not just us where prices have exploded. They (n.r., CFR Infrastructure) have carried out the procedure to the end… I believe that in the next week or two, the indicators will be re-approved in the government meeting and the tender will be relaunched without problems through the Transport Programme. In these two years there has been the A1 Lugoj – Deva tunnel, I don’t know other tenders of this type. The remedy is short, it is sure to lose a couple of months until the whole procedure of re-approval of the technical-economic indicators is resumed, but this does not mean that the investment is set aside”, the Minister of Transport said on Friday in Timisoara.
