On 5 July 2018 the Bulgarian Ministry of Transport, Information Technologies and Communications opened a tender procedure for identifying a concessionaire of the Sofia Airport. Detailed information on the procedure is available at https://www.concession-sof.bg/en/.

Sofia Airport is the largest passengers and cargo airport in Bulgaria. It is currently operated by Letishte Sofia EAD, a joint-stock company wholly owned by the Bulgarian State. As per the recent data published by the Sofia Airport:

  • 6,490,096 passengers in total in 2017 (that is a 60% increase in total passengers’ traffic for the last 3 years). In comparison, the recently leased Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport had 5,343,420 passengers in 2017.
  • In 2017 57,670 airplanes landed at the airport, compared to 44,416 in 2015.
  • The cargo and mail traffic in 2017 was 20,818 tons, up from 18,727 tons in 2015.

Some highlights from the available tender documentation:

  • Open tender procedure, i.e. no negotiations of the concession agreement will be allowed.
  • Language of the procedure – Bulgarian and/or English. English applications and offers should be submitted along with a Bulgarian translation.
  • Deadline for submission of offers – 22 October 2018, 13:00 (GMT + 2).
  • Participation of consortiums (or other associations of undertakings) is allowed subject to certain requirements as to the content of the consortium agreement and the shareholding structure of the project entity to sign the concession agreement.
  • Demonstration of participant’s technical and/or financial capacity through third parties is allowed.

The full access to the tender documentation is organized as follows:

  1. Confidential information – limited physical access to a data room at the Ministry of Transport and Information Technologies. Confidential information includes all effective agreements of Letishte Sofia EAD, list of pending court proceedings, list of Letishte Sofia EAD’s personnel (by positions), copies of effective insurance policies and other confidential information.
  2. Non-confidential information – available in the Virtual Data Room (VDR). Access details for VDR are to be published on https://www.concession-sof.bg/en/.

Concession terms:

  • Object of the concession – “Civil airport for public use Sofia” with a concession area of 5 128 460 sq.m, including land plots, buildings, facilities and visual air navigation systems.
  • Concession period – 420 months (may be extended further in certain circumstances).
  • Estimated value (for 420 months, based on the expected income of the concessionaire from the airport taxes .and any other permitted economic activities) – EUR 3,465,927,509.03 (VAT excl.)
  • Estimated total value (including any possible extensions of the concession period) – EUR 3,898,229,907.50 (VAT excl.)
  • Initial concession payment – EUR 281,210,535 (VAT excl.)
  • Yearly concession payment – min. EUR 7,669,378.22 (VAT excl.)
  • Terminal 3 to be constructed by the concessionaire within 10 years as from the concession’s initial date.

Contact our team lead if you need further information.

The information in this post does not constitute a legal advice and serves only for information purposes.