A new public tender contest to lease out commercial spaces for public catering and specialized trade for the sterile area inside the Chisinau International Airport was initiated, IPN reports.

The Public Property Agency said that the state-owned assets will be leased out for a period of three years.

According to the calendar, the bidding period is March 11-25, while the period for the examination of submitted applications and confirmatory documents (determination/confirmation of participants’ eligibility) is March 26-28. The tender contest will be held on March 29.

A tender contest to lease out commercial spaces at the Chisinau International Airport was held recently and only two companies – LeBridge and Lagardère – applied to take part in it. In this connection, Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development Andrei Spînu said that sufficient competition is not ensured in such conditions. “The preliminary conclusions show that this process had been sabotaged, including from within, and we are obliged to cancel the tender contest and initiate a new procedure as soon as possible. Shor’s goal was to continue extracting money from airport spaces and block a fair tender contest,” the minister stated on February 19.

Earlier, the press said there were suspicions that the tender specifications of the first tender contest were prepared specifically for the French company Lagardère. Minister Spînu denied the reports as false, while representatives of the company said that they didn’t participate in the working out of specifications for the Airport tender contest and didn’t believe that parameters that would favor the company were included in these because the requirements indicated there are common for their industry.