Court freezes tender on Alstom's complaint

  • 2005-01-06
  • Baltic News Service
VILNIUS - The Vilnius District Court has frozen the 100 million euro tender on the procurement of new locomotives for Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways), after France's Alstom, one of the bidders, lodged a complaint against the preliminary results.


Unofficial sources have reported that Germany's Siemens was named the winner by the tender commission. Alstom ranked second, while Canada's Bombardier was third, according to reports.

Alstom officials claim that the commission did not study the bids in due fashion.

"In our opinion, the commission did not conduct a truly thorough evaluation of all bids and failed to consider all technical terms," Viktoras Karaliunas, Alstom representative in Lithuania, said.

The commission, for example, did not provide Alstom with either bid comparison tables or with explanations. This led to doubts about the integrity of the commission's decision.

"We think that the price offered by Alstom was lower," Karaliunas said.

The Vilnius District Court passed the decision to freeze the tender last week. However, the court has yet to announce when it would consider Alstom's complaint.

Lithuanian Railways announ-ced the locomotive procurement tender with the backing of European Investment Bank.

Lithuanian Railways' annul freight volumes increased 18.6 percent in 2003 to reach a post-Soviet high of 43.4 million tons. Its full-year net earnings almost tripled to 14.1 million litas (4.1 million euros), while revenues increased by 18.9 percent to 915 million litas.

The railway operator has forecast that pretax earnings increase nearly 5 million litas to over 30 million litas in 2004.