HKL tram acquisition delayed by complaint to Market Court by Croatian tram supplier Koncar

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The Helsinki City Transport (HKL) acquisition decision regarding 40 new trams will be postponed until an unspecified future date.
      The ongoing bidding contest ground to a juddering halt when a Croatian tram manufacturer that was dropped out of the competition filed a complaint with the Market Court in November 2009.
     
The tram supplier Koncar’s view is that in the bidding contest HKL has acted against Finnish legislation on acquisitions. According to Koncar, HKL failed to provide it with a copy of its ruling, in which the competitors’ bids would have been compared with each other, as assumed by the Acquisition Act.
      HKL denies it has contravened the law.
      “In these matters the threshold to complain seems to be very low. These type of rail equipment acquisitions, however, are rather rare”, says HKL administrative director Yrjö Judström.
     
The approximately EUR 100 million bidding contest relates to the purchase of low-carriage trams in the 2010s.
      The first new trams should be in operation already in 2013-2014.
      In its appeal, Koncar requests that the bidding contest ruling be nullified in respect of the rejection of Koncar.
      In addition, Koncar demands to receive the justification behind HKL’s decisions, and that its legal expenses be compensated for in full.
      In December 2009 the Market Court ordered HKL to freeze for the time being the tram bidding contest. The ruling was emphasised with a conditional imposition of a fine of EUR 500,000.
     
HKL objected to the ruling.
      The company feels it has acted perfectly fairly in the matter.
      The decision that upset Koncar was made on June 25th 2009.
      At that time HKL ended up dropping out three of the eight entries to the bidding contest. Koncar's was among the dismissed bids.
      At the moment three entries remain in the competition: the German Bombardier, the Finnish Transtech, and the Spanish CAF.
      HKL has also been summoned to the Market Court in connection with another complaint dealing with the capital area metro’s entry monitoring equipment.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Helsinki City Transport to launch bidding contest to prevent repeating previous mistakes with low-carriage trams (9.4.2009)
  Croatian tram´s test runs with passengers to commence today in Helsinki (21.1.2008)

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