Committee Halts Mega Train Purchase Deal
The State Procurement Arbitration Committee forbade Hungarian State Railways Rt. (MÁV) to sign a contract with a consortium of Swiss Stadler AG and Hungary’s Ganz Transelektro Transport Rt. for the purchase of trains.
The Committee canceled the deal five days after MÁV announced the consortium won the state contract, which included the purchase of 30 suburban motor trains and an option for another 30 vehicles.
Bombardier Transportation GmbH, a German-Canadian runner up to the Swiss-Hungarian consortium, filed complaints that MÁV, which started its tender procedure last April, made changes to its evaluation criteria in the course of the tender. Bombardier also claimed that MÁV in its evaluation did not properly consider the trains’ electricity consumption in the next 30 years. While Bombardier offered cheaper vehicles, MÁV found the electricity consumption of the Stadler-Ganz trains to be better.
András Ökrös, MÁV’s newly appointed deputy-CEO in charge of financial issues, also publicly criticized the evaluation procedure of the train tender. CEO Zoltán Mándoki last week suspended Ökrös from his post. MÁV’s supervisory board is expected to initiate an inspection into the evaluation procedure of the suburban train tender.
