Hungary’s Public Procurement Authority has rejected the tender documents of the renovation of Budapest’s landmark Chain Bridge, citing errors in their content, daily Magyar Nemzet said.
The paper cited the municipal group of ruling Fidesz saying that after a more than six-month delay the opposition leadership of Budapest had still failed to conduct a tender with proper content on the bridge’s much needed upgrade. The board of the Budapest public transport authority BKK approved tender documents for the project on July 24, the paper noted. The project would be financed by the Budapest municipality, a 6 billion forint (EUR 17m) contribution by the central government and loans, the paper said.
Commenting on the authority’s decision, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony said the municipal council considers the original tender to be sound, adding that the project’s urgency meant that the city council had “no choice” but to incorporate the authority’s instructions into the tender. BKK’s directorate will rework the tender immediately, he said, adding that this would not be the reason for any further delays to the bridge’s upgrade. Karácsony noted that after thorough preparations BKK approved the public procurement tender for the upgrade of Chain Bridge about ten days ago. But the Public Procurement Authority reduced the original ten-year reference period in the tender to eight, Karácsony noted. He said this was crucial because there had not been any bridge renovations carried out in Budapest over the past eight years, meaning that none of the bidders will be able to provide references to previous projects they had worked on. Karácsony also said that the government had yet to issue a resolution on the amount of funding it will allocate to the project despite having promised to do so back in February.
MTI
