International Tender on Electricity

TIRANA, Nov. 6 – The power corporation said Monday that seven Albanian, Swiss, German and Czech companies joined an international tender to supply Albania with electricity in 2007. The tender was held Monday afternoon. Two Albanian companies, three Swiss ones, one German and one Czech enter the tender to supply electricity for the whole year of 2007, the state-owned Albanian Electro-Energy Corporation, or KESH, said. KESH wanted to be supplied with 2.2 MWh of electricity with a total funding of 162.8 million (US$206.9 million). The target electricity volume requested was not met by the offer counterpart. Only four companies made an offer to supply electricity in all of 2007, with the remaining three unable to guarantee anything else but partial supply. The highest offer was made by Swiss-based EFT offering to deliver 438,000 MWh worth 26.5 million euro. EGL followed the classification with an offer to deliver between 306,000 MWh and 438,000 MWh worth 10.8 million euro and 27 million euro, respectively.
KESH may take up to one month to decide on the tender results and also give details. Albania has suffered chronic electricity problems during the post-communist period since 1990 due to chronic nonpayment, poor management, a poor system and lack of money. Ninety percent of the country’s electricity is produced in the north from hydroelectric plants that suffer from lack of rain and work at less than half capacity due to outdated technology. Some of the most important future projects include the construction of thermal power plants in order to reduce hydroelectric dependency.