Bulgaria Shortlists 5 Bidders for Danube

The government has invited five bidders to place binding offers in a tender for the construction of a euro160 million (US$205 million) bridge across the Danube River, the Transport Ministry said Thursday.

The shortlisted bidders include a consortium of Germany's Hochtief and Spain's OHL; Spanish company FCC; a consortium led by France's Vinci and Bulgarian companies Moststroy and Glavbolgarstroy; a consortium of Germany's Zublin, France's Eiffel and Austria's Alpine Mayreder; and a consortium of France's Bouygues, Italy's Rizzani de Eccher and Bulgaria's Transstroy Varna.

The planned bridge will link by road and rail the Bulgarian port of Vidin to the Romanian city of Calafat _ creating a key element in a European transport corridor from German city of Dresden to Istanbul in Turkey.

The government expects the winning bid to be chosen by December, and construction to start by May 2007. The bridge should be ready three years later, the Transport Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said it would launch tenders next year for the construction of adjacent facilities, such as a new train station and additional railways and roads, bringing the total cost of the project to euro236 million (US$302 million).

The project enjoys the financial backing of the European Union's Phare and ISPA pre-accession programs, the French Development Agency and the German Credit Institution for Reconstruction and Development, which have granted a total of euro78 million (US$100 million).

Bulgaria's government will chip in another euro60 million (US$77 million), and the rest will be loaned by the European Investment Bank and the German Credit Institution for Reconstruction and Development, the ministry said.

Bulgaria and Romania _ which both aim to join the EU on Jan. 1 _ signed the agreement to build the Vidin-Calafat bridge in 2000, but various bureaucratic hurdles delayed the project.

At the moment, the only bridge on the 600-kilometer (370-mile) Danube section of the Bulgarian-Romanian border links Ruse, in Bulgaria, and Giurgiu, in Romania, by road and rail.

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