Antitrust watchdog overrules Sofia’s choice of waste-to-biofuel plant contractor

The Bulgarian antitrust regulator said on Tuesday it has cancelled Sofia’s decision to award a waste-to-biofuel plant construction contract to Greek tie-up Aktor-Helektor.

The municipality of the capital city can resume the tender from the stage of eligibility of bidders' documents, the Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC) said in a statement.

The regulator explained that Sofia municipality has disqualified one of the five bidders without justifying properly its decision. The municipality has also failed to ask Aktor-Helektor for additional documents, the CPC added.

In the tender, Aktor-Helektor received an overall score of 181.52 points. The company offers to build the plant for 213.5 million levs ($143 million/109 million euro).

The competition regulator started the case against the tender procedure after two of the bidders, joint venture VSM-SPH and Stanilov-Daneko tie-up, filed complaints against the selection of Aktor-Helektor in April.

The project for waste-to-biofuel plant is the second stage of the construction of an integrated waste management system in Bulgaria's capital city. The combined value of the two stages is 346 million levs, of which 84.26% will be provided as EU funding.

(1 euro = 1.9558 Bulgarian levs)

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