Plovdiv Airport will look for an operator

Bulgarian Transport Minister Grozdan Karadjov announced during a parliamentary Q&A on Friday that the tender for selecting an operator for Plovdiv Airport will launch in the second half of this year or the beginning of next year.

He got into an argument with MPs from the far-right Revival party about the state's ability to manage and develop airports in Bulgaria and the success of the Sofia Airport concession.

Our intention, and mine personally, is to conduct a successful concession tender to attract a private investor," commented Karadjov.

According to him, the goal is to ensure long-term investments in the airport infrastructure and to find an experienced operator to take over the management of the airport. In this way, prerequisites for the development of the airport will be created.

Plovdiv Airport has real opportunities to increase its tourist traffic, especially with winter charters, but also to become a key cargo hub for businesses in Southern Bulgaria.

The minister's intention to have the airport on concession was announced back in February of this year.

Over the years, Plovdiv Airport has repeatedly failed to attract an investor. In 2020, a second concession tender was launched, but it ended unsuccessfully in 2021, with no submitted bids. The Ministry of Transport justified this with a slowdown related to the COVID pandemic.

The first tender procedure, in 2018, was also not finalized, as the Chinese consortium HNA Group and the Dutch-registered Plovdiv Airport Invest withdrew their bid, while the second-place bid was deemed insufficient by the ministry.

At the end of 2022, it became clear that private land lots on the airport were interfering with the possibility to grant the concession.

Back to our present, Revival MPs Emil Yankov and Dimitar Gyurov verbally attacked the transport minister, saying that the state should manage and develop the airport, even if the management has so far failed to do it well. They also questioned the success of the Sofia Airport concession.

The state is not a good manager. It cannot ensure the development of the airport, and it is much better to invest large sums of private money, tens and hundreds of millions, in public state property, because it becomes the property of the entire Bulgarian people," countered Karadjov.

Regarding Sofia Airport, he said that "the concession is very successful." He added that it should not be forgotten that when the airport was first leased, the state received 330 million euros, despite the COVID pandemic.

It was clear to the investor that there would be no flights, but they nevertheless paid this grandiose amount of money and made a commitment to invest in public state property.”

Karadjov added that not only should Plovdiv Airport be given up for concession, but the same should be done with the large seaport terminals and the highways in Bulgaria. 

The concessionaire of Sofia Airport - Sof Connect - paid an initial concession fee of EUR 336.7 million at the beginning of 2021. 

However, it also owes concession fees of over 79 million euros for the first three years of the 35-year-long concession. These will be paid only in two equal installments in 2046-2048, since shortly after the start of the concession, the outgoing government of Boyko Borisov voted for a 10-year postponement of the fees due to the pandemic and the reduced passenger flow. At that time, the Minister of Transport was Rosen Zhelyazkov (the current PM), who was of the opinion that the delay would not harm the state, although even then it was clear that this would be an amount of about 245 million euros in total.

Despite the restored traffic at the airport, the deferral of Sof Connect's concession fees has been maintained.

Translated by Tzvetozar Vincent Iolov