The Greek company "Archirodon", which won the tender for the construction of the Cebren hydro power plant, did not extend the bank guarantee that expired on December 31, 2023, North Macedonia’s authorities claimed in a press conference.
While the guarantee lasted, they had to sign an agreement with (Power plants of North Macedonia) ESM for joint ventures. However, this was not done, and the country’s ministry of environment reminded the Greek company about this issue on December 14th, but it did not receive any response.
“According to the regulation and the tender conditions, we do not have the conditions to activate the bank guarantee,” environment minister Kaja Shukova said.
"Archirodon" set certain conditions, because with the current ones, as they explained, they did not have good opportunities to secure funds from the banks to build "Cebren", but the Government could not accept the additional requests that were not part of the tender, she added.
"We decided to keep the conditions as in the tender documentation. Obviously, the company could not secure loans from the banks with these conditions, given that it is a large financial construction of a billion euros," Shukova noted.
Now it is again down to energy authorities to decide what will happen next with Chebren, Shukova said.
"The state has been leading this process for 20 years. I think that now people from the energy sector should sit down at the table and decide whether a new tender should be called or whether the state should build it," Shukova emphasized.
