May 22 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's BDZ Passengers, a unit of state-owned railway group BDZ Holding, said that it has signed a 55.5 million levs ($30.9 million/28.4 million euro) contract for the purchase of ten new electric locomotives with a tie-up between Siemens Mobility Austria and Siemens Mobility Bulgaria.
The price includes the delivery of Siemens Smartron locomotives, as well as maintenance and supply of all necessary spare parts and consumables for a three-year period, BDZ Passengers said in a statement on Thursday.
The contract also envisages the training of BDZ Passengers personnel to operate and maintain the new locomotives.
The first locomotive will be delivered by February 2021, while all 10 must be delivered by May 2021.
These will be the first new locomotives delivered to BDZ since 1986-1987, transport minister Rosen Zhelyazkov commented.
The consortium submitted the sole bid in the second stage of the tender for the contract.
Initially, four bidders submitted expressions of interest in the tender but one of them - a tie-up led by local group Excelor Holding, was disqualified. The other two which expressed interest, were Germany-headquartered Bombardier Transportation and Spain's Stadler Rail Valencia.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)