Latvia, Legislation, Railways

The court’s representative Ilze Butkus told LETA that the Procurement Monitoring Bureau tasked Pasazieru Vilciens to reassess the bids of the tender. The court decided that Talgo’s complaint on the Procurement Monitoring Bureau’s decision cannot be accepted because it cannot be heared separately from the decision on ruling the winner of the tender.

The Administrative Court’s decision can be appealed before the Supreme Court.

Talgo believes that the Procurement Monitoring Bureau had made significant and grave mistakes, drew wrong conclusions, thus, making illegitimate decisions.

As reported, on reassessing the bids submitted in its train supply tender, Latvia’s Pasazieru Vilciens rail passenger carrier decided to purchase the electric trains from the Czech company Skoda Vagonka. The contract price is EUR 241.888.

The initial winner of the tender was changed because Pasazieru Vilciens heeded the Public Procurement Monitoring Bureau’s advice to consider a different electricity price. The new lifecycle cost analysis showed that the offer of Skoda Vagonka was more economical. The participants of the tender were not allowed to change their bids during the reassessment.

Pasazieru Vilciens reported that the tender’s original winner, Spanish company Talgo, had offered to supply the trains for a lower price but that the maintenance costs offered by Skoda Vagonka for the trains’ 35-year lifecycle were lower, which meant lower overall costs.

Previously, Pasazieru Vilciens declared Spain’s Talgo the winner of the train tender, but the Public Procurement Monitoring Bureau banned Pasazieru Vilciens from concluding the contract with this company and ordered the rail company to invalidate the results of its electric train tender.

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.

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-percent owned subsidiary of the Latvian Railway, in October 2008 it was transformed into an independent state-owned company.