Bucharest Mayor Firea: Mercedes Benz submitted bid for 130 hybrid buses

Bucharest General Mayor Gabriela Firea said on Tuesday that Mercedes Benz has submitted a bid for the municipality's tender to purchase 130 hybrid buses. "Just today Mercedes-Benz submitted an, I'd say, significant bid for the 130 hybrid buses. The bid will of course be assessed and in a very short period, as per the law - of course - the announcement will be made if it meets the bidding criteria. Ten big companies were interested in this tender, but only Mercedes Benz made a bid for the hybrid buses," the General Mayor told private broadcaster Antena 3. As for the timeliness of transferring the Bucharest ring motorway under the authority of the City Hall, Firea said that this should have been done three years ago, and that at this moment, in the last year of her term, this would be "difficult and counterproductive". "The Transport Ministry already has several contracts concluded following tenders and these must be checked item by item, on a daily basis," Firea said. In a different thread, Gabriela Firea said that in a telephone conversation she had at one point with Social Democrat Chairman Liviu Dragnea, she had drawn his attention to the fact that the City Hall "has a very small budget", which risks to affect investment projects. "That billion euro circulated in the media isn't true. We got 600 million from the Ministry of Finance last year, so this is about half the amount that is being circulated. (...) And I understood there is openness - just as for the rest of the country, of course - for the capital city to enter these governmental projects, both in the Investment and Development Fund, with at least two projects, and also to speed up works on the Bucharest ring motorway, subway works, and other investment projects," Firea said. AGERPRES (RO - author: Irinela Visan, editor: Antonia Nita; EN - author: Maria Voican, editor: Simona Iacob)