Prague – Six companies and associations are interested in one of the biggest commissions in Czech history – a tender to clean up old ecological damage worth CZK 115 billion.
Although the Chamber of Commerce and the non-governmental anti-corruption organisation Transparency International criticised the tender, the Finance Ministry yesterday opened the envelope with the names of the interested companies.
The ministry announced that the companies include PPF, owned by billionaire Petr Kellner (this company created an association with the firms AVE CZ, Dekonta and ECOSOIL), as well as Geosan, Marius Pedersen Engineering and two consortiums, created through the partnership of Czech companies and international companies.
The price will decide
“In the first round, the competing firms must demonstrate their ability to take on the commission by presenting documents with references and proof of sufficient capital, as well as sufficient personnel and technical equipment, financial guarantees and technical capacities,” said ministry spokesman Ondřej Jakob. The companies that fulfill the conditions will advance to the second round.
The ministry says the second round will start between the end of March and the beginning of April 2009. “The only evaluation criterion in the second round will be the price,” added Jakob.
The Finance Ministry already said earlier that the tender will help fulfill the state’s obligation to repair ecological damage caused before 1992. If the ecological damage were repaired according to the current methods, that is, by dividing the tender among different companies, the ministry says the state would not meet its ecological obligations by 2015.
The Chamber of Commerce says old ecological damage should be handled through smaller commissions, not with a single multi-billion crown tender. Smaller local firms would have more of a chance to succeed in smaller tenders.
The NGO Transparency International (TI) is also criticising the tender because of the potential for corruption and the unnecessarily high costs of removing ecological damage in one big commission.
According to TI, the state might spend tens of billions more than if it had stayed with the current system of dividing the work among smaller companies.
The commission is so big that, according to Transparency International, very few companies have the capacity to carry it out. The tender will thus not let the state bring down the final cost. “There won’t be any tough economic competition,” David Ondráček from TI’s Prague branch told Aktuálně.cz.
Companies in the tender:
*GEOSAN GROUP a.s.
*Marius Pedersen Engineering a.s.
*An association of the following companies:
PPF Advisory (CR) a.s.
ECOSOIL SUD GmbH
AVE CZ odpadové hospodářství s.r.o.
DEKONTA, a.s.
* A consortium:
Deme Environmental Contractors NV (“DEC”)
Dredging International NV (“DI”)
* KAROB, a.s.
* An association of the companies
“PD-Gruppe – Stavoprogres”:
P-D Industriegesellschaft mbH
STAVOPROGRES BRNO, spol. s r.o.
