Bulgarian Ministry of Transport buys 5 more electric trains from Škoda

The Bulgarian Ministry of Transport has decided to buy an additional 5 electric trains from the Czech manufacturer Škoda. The ministry has taken this step following 2 years of failures in its attempts to effectively use the financial resources provided under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) to purchase new rolling stock for the country’s railways.

The new purchase will be financed with funds from the Transport Connectivity Program, part of the Cohesion Policy of the European Union. An additional agreement with Škoda will be signed on Thursday, according to Krasimira Stoyanova, the interim Minister of Transport, during the meeting of the Program Monitoring Committee, held in Sofia.

The Czech company is also a contractor under one of the so-called “mega-tenders” laid down in the RRP - the one for the purchase of 20 electric trains. The value of that contract is 205 million euros, and the delivery period is 2 years, according to the most optimistic forecast.

It was already at the signing of this “mega-contract” that the Bulgarian interim Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev alluded that there was a possibility to buy 5 additional trains, which would be financed from the state budget.

Later it was clarified that, in fact, the additional train units will be financed by the connectivity operational program, but at the expense of other projects in it. Until a month ago, the Bulgarian authorities were awaiting a decision by the European Commission that would allow the change.

A press release by the Ministry of Transport indicates that after some negotiations, the EC has allowed the amendment of the operational program. However, the allocated financial resource for the additional trains was not disclosed.

According to the contract with Škoda, the unit price for a train was 12.5 million euros, excluding VAT, which means that the purchase of the 5 trains will require almost 65 million euros, without VAT.

For the first time, under the Transport Connectivity Program, we will finance the purchase of new railway rolling stock," says the ministry’s press release.

This is because the EU-funded program is intended to develop projects concerning major road and rail infrastructure.

Currently, under the Transport Connectivity Program 2021-2027, 9 tenders have been published, 8 of which are open. These include projects related to rail and road infrastructure, intermodality, innovation, traffic systems and others. The large infrastructure railway and road projects "Plovdiv - Burgas" (phase 2), "Voluyak - Dragoman" (phase 2), and the "Ruse - Veliko Tarnovo" highway are to be implemented in the program period, according to the ministry.

Regarding the OP "Transport and Transport Infrastructure" 2014-2020, there was a 99.4% rate of financial implementation, and the examination of the submitted requests for final payments for all projects under it has already been completed.

Co-Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Managing Authority. Neither the European Union nor the Managing Authority can be held responsible for them.

Translated by Tzvetozar Vincent Iolov