March the 13th, 2021 - The Hrvatski Leskovac-Karlovac railway project tender has been forced to grind to a halt once again as the Chinese throw a spanner in the works in the form of another complaint.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the Chinese have once again stopped the tender for the reconstruction/construction of the second track on the Hrvatski Leskovac-Karlovac railway section, worth a total of 2.04 billion kuna. The tender was launched back on September the 4th last year, and the first deadline for submitting bids was November the 3rd, 2020.
However, so far there have been a total of seven appeals against the tender documentation and its changes, which has extended the tender by more than four months, according to a report from Vecernji list.
The last complaint was filed by the Chinese company China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group (CREEG), more specifically its Zagreb branch, about ten days before the deadline for submitting bids was due back on March the 9th. HZ Infrastruktura sent a request to the State Commission for the Control of Public Procurement Procedures (DKOM) to continue the procurement procedure, despite the aforementioned complaint filed by a Chinese company.
HZI stated that CREEG's appeal was untimely and that the Chinese were merely abusing the institute of appeal with the sole aim of extending the deadline for the submission of bids. They also stated that they received money from European Union (EU) funds for the Hrvatski Leskovac-Karlovac railway project with the deadline for the eligibility of all expenditures until December the 31st, 2023.
Therefore, they warned that any further extension of the procedure could cause termination of the grant agreement, which could have an adverse effect on the entire Croatian economy. This would cause damage that would be greater than the value of the purchase itself, and that is one of the reasons, according to the Public Procurement Act, on the basis of which the continuation of the tender can be allowed despite the submitted Chinese complaint/appeal. Despite that, DKOM rejected the request on the grounds that HZI had not been able to actually prove what it claimed.
The Chinese company China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), which is building the Peljesac bridge down in Dalmatia, also stopped this tender with an appeal filed on December the 4th, which DKOM rejected as untimely within just four days. It was then interpreted that the Chinese had filed the complaint to put pressure on the Croatian side over another tender - for a concession on the Zagreb coast in the Port of Rijeka, where they had made the best offer in a consortium with other Chinese companies.
However, the United States and the EU both put pressure on Croatia not to let the Chinese have access to the Port of Rijeka, and at the end of last year the tender was entirely annulled. Therefore, the new Chinese complaint for the Hrvatski Leskovac-Karlovac railway project might easily be interpreted as a kind of revenge for the Rijeka situation, but that is yet to be proven beyond doubt.
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