A new tender for road repair and maintenance in the country is forthcoming

A new public tender for the repair and maintenance of the road network is set to be announced. This was announced by acting Regional Minister Nikolay Naydenov in an interview with Nova TV. It became clear that the new procedure is urgently needed, as under the previous contracts, the financial resources allocated for the next four years had been spent in just one year.

The minister recalled the information released on Thursday, according to which the budget of the Road Infrastructure Agency (RIA) has been literally drained through the mass signing of addenda to the old contracts.

Since more work was assigned, good governance required that, as early as last year – once it became clear that the funds were running out – no additional annexes for another 1 billion should have been signed to secure funding for the same companies, but rather a public tender should have been launched and allowed to proceed, which is what we will now do.”

For now, it is unclear what the budget for the upcoming procedure will be, how many years it will cover, and what requirements will be set forth in it.

At the moment, the state is in a stalemate – it cannot stop payments under the current addenda until the new tenders are completed, so that the roads are not left without any maintenance. The financial picture, however, is alarming – the Road Infrastructure Agency (API) owes over 752 million euros to construction companies, while the available funds for the next three months amount to a mere 200 million euros.

This shortfall is a direct result of the premature awarding of contracts for activities amounting to 50% of the budget initially allocated for four years, namely just under 1.2 billion euros.

The minister commented once again that major repairs had been carried out under the guise of preventive maintenance. According to him, this occurred without a new tender, as the work was awarded directly via an addendum to the company that already had a maintenance contract. He added that major repairs are legally guaranteed for 10 years, whereas for these “preventive” fixes, the warranty is significantly shorter and the quality is at the state’s expense.

The minister confirmed that he has already halted the order for guardrails worth 590 million euros, signed in the final hours of the previous government. The inspectorate’s report shows that it was “rigged” to eliminate all candidates except one. The case has already been referred to the Ministry of the Interior.

Naydenov was also firm regarding the route of the 2026 Giro d’Italia cycling tour. He refused to spend an additional €40 million on repairs, the cost of which mysteriously jumped from €10 million to €55 million in just two months.

I won’t spend 40 million on a single race. There are other problems on the roads,” he concluded.

To restore trust in the institution, the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works promises full transparency—from now on, every road repair order and request for asphalting will be published online in real time.

Translated with DeepL.