No bids were submitted for construction of rail tracks to Kerch Straight Bridge in Russia
The second competition to select a railway contractor for the construction of the railway approaches to the Kerch Straight Bridge failed due to lack of bids, Kommersant reported. The contract is worth 16.9 billion rubles and the work needs to be finished before November 2019. The first competition was announced in September and the only application was filed by OJSC Yakutian Railway, but the company failed to pass the preliminary selection process. The second competition was announced mid-December but did not receive a single application. According to the newspaper sources, the main reason for the lack of interest in the competition is the contract’s low value.
"The project is extremely important and complicated because of the high seismic activity in the area, and a contractor with a high probability will fall under the sanctions," the head of Infoline-Analitika, Mikhail Burmistrov, said.
According to him, the work could be completed in the preferred timeframe only if the contractor is chosen in the first quarter of 2017.
In September, the US imposed sanctions against Russian companies that are associated with the construction of a bridge across the Kerch Straight.