EU – Baltic States, Latvia, Legislation, Railways, Transport

The Public Procurement Monitoring Bureau has ruled to ban Pasazieru Vilciens from closing the deal with Talgo and has ordered the rail company to invalidate the results of its electric train tender.

Pasazieru Vilciens has been given 20 days to deal with the violations found in the procurement procedure and to reassess the bids submitted in the tender.

Pasazieru Vilciens representative Egons Alers told LETA that the rail company is strongly interested in the tender’s success.

“We are thanking the Public Procurement Monitoring Bureau for pointing out the flaws in the tender and we will deal with them right away,” said Alers.

Transport Minister Talis Linkaits (New Conservative Party) told LETA: “We will go through the content of the Public Procurement Monitoring Bureau’s decision. Based on this, we will assess the company’s management and Pasazieru Vilciens’ responsibility for what has happened in the procurement process.”

As reported, Spanish company Talgo has won the tender to supply new passenger trains to Pasazieru Vilciens for EUR 225,303,262. The contract price includes delivery of the trains and the equipment necessary for their maintenance, spare parts for the first five years and training of the personnel.

Pasazieru Vilciens CEO Rodzers Janis Grigulis said that the bid submitted by the Spanish company was economically the most feasible for the train’s projected service life of 35 years. Asked about the prices offered by other bidders, Grigulis said that the next best offer had been EUR 20 mln costlier.

Pasazieru Vilciens in September 2015 started a new tender to purchase electric trains, and four bidders had advanced to the second stage of the tender – Spanish company Talgo, Polish subsidiary of Swiss company Stadler, Spanish company Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles S.A. (CAF), and Czech company Skoda Vagonka.

Skoda Vagonka and CAF have both appealed the outcome of the train supply tender.

Pasazieru Vilciens was established in 2001 to separate domestic passenger services from other functions performed by the state-owned Latvijas Dzelzcels (Latvian Railway). Although initially Pasazieru Vilciens was a 100% -owned subsidiary of the Latvian Railway, in October 2008 it was transformed into an independent state-owned company.