The Commission for the Protection of Competition took decisions on complaints related to public procurements of the Sofia Municipality for the collection and transportation of waste, as well as for winter maintenance of roads in the "Vitosha" natural park.
The public procurement of the Sofia Municipality for the collection and transportation of waste is divided into 7 separate positions, grouped by administrative regions, with decisions of the contracting authority being issued for 5 separate positions - 4 for termination of the procedures and one for selection of a contractor. A total of 7 complaints from participants have been submitted to the CPC regarding these.
For two of the separate positions, there are selected contractors, the decisions are within the appeal period, but no complaints have been submitted to the Commission at the moment.
For 4 of the appealed positions, the CPC disregarded the submitted complaints and confirmed the decisions of the contracting authority to terminate the procedures, and for one - it returned the procedure to the municipality for review.
The CPC considered the complaints against the decisions of the municipality to terminate position No. 1 (area “Sredets“) - from the consortium “Chistota Sredets“ and “Zauba“ EAD, and at position No. 7 (districts “Vazrazhdane“, “Oborishte“ and “Triaditsa-center“) - by the consortium “Pochistvane Triaditsa“ and “Eko Resurs-R“ OOD. The Commission dismissed the complaints after establishing a discrepancy between the technical proposals of the eliminated participants and the requirements of the contracting authority. The CPC also accepted that the termination of the procedure was duly motivated by the contracting authority with the impossibility of ensuring efficiency in spending public funds. The SO has presented reasons that the price proposals of the only ranked participants for the two positions exceed many times the value of the estimated unit prices, consistent with the values foreseen for these activities in the approved budget plan for 2025 of the Sofia Municipality.
With the same arguments, the CPC dismissed the appeal of the Consortium “Pochistvane Triaditsa“ for position No. 6 (districts “Lyulin“ and “Krasno Selo“) without respect and confirmed the decision of the contracting authority to terminate it.
The Commission also dismissed the appeal of the Consortium “Chistota Sredets“ on item No. 3 (districts „Izgrev“, „Slatina“ and „Poduyane“), establishing that the technical proposal of the participant does not meet the requirements of the contracting authority and in the absence of any suitable offer, the termination of the procedure by the contracting authority is correct and lawful.
On separate item No. 4 (districts „Ilinden“, „Nadezhda“ and „Serdika“) the CPC upheld the appeals of the two excluded participants - „Nelsen-chistota“ EOOD and „ZMBG“ EOOD, due to the fact that a significant part of the arguments of the deputy mayor of Sofia does not correspond to the evidence in the file, as the parts of their technical offers specified in the decision of the contracting authority correspond to the requirements of the contracting authority. Some of the contracting authority's considerations are devoid of specificity and the CPC assumes that in this case their proper proof is necessary, which is also the opinion of the Public Procurement Agency when announcing the procurement. With regard to the first-place ranked participant "Norm Easy Eco Sofia" DZZD (with participants in it "Easy Eco Clean" EOOD and "Norm Sanai Yuryunleri Imalyat ve Dash Tijaret Limited Shirketi - Sofia branch, branch of a foreign participant), the CPC established a lack of legal personality of the branch of the foreign trader to participate independently in procedures for awarding public procurement in Bulgaria and a lack of representative authority of the branch to independently conclude contracts for a company under Art. 357-364 of the Obligations and Contracts Act. The contracting authority's decision has been annulled, and the procedure is returned to the Sofia Municipality for reconsideration.
On the public procurement for winter maintenance of roads in the “Vitosha“ nature park, the CPC ruled on a complaint by “Consortium Eco Sphere 2025“ DZZD. The Commission dismissed the complaint, accepting that the information presented by the complainant regarding the price justification was insufficient and unproven. At the same time, the CPC established that the contracting authority had sufficiently argued the acceptance of the price justification of the participant determined as the contractor, taking into account the economic characteristics of the services, the selected technical solutions, the expected volume of activities and the availability of resources, in accordance with the specifics of the order and the requirements of the law.
The decisions of the CPC are subject to appeal before the Supreme Administrative Court within 14 days of their notification.