GEORGIA: An aborted contract for Russia’s Metrowagonmash to supply metro trains to Tbilisi has been renegotiated, the city has announced.
Financing was agreed with the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development in February 2020, and following an international tender Transmashholding subsidiary Metrowagonmash was awarded €49·2m contract covering 11 four-car trains in December 2021.
However, international sanctions imposed following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 meant EBRD was no longer able to finance the order. In late 2022 Mayor Kakha Kaladze said negotiations were underway with EBRD for the purchase of trains from an alternative supplier.
In January this year, Deputy Mayor Irakli Khmaladze said it had not been possible to find an alternative supplier at an acceptable price, and so the contract with Metrowagonmash has been renegotiated ‘so that our interests were protected to the maximum’.
He said ’we have reached terms and agreed every clause of the agreement with the EBRD’, stressing that Metrowagonmash itself is not subject to sanctions.
Under the revised agreement the metro cars will first be delivered to Georgia and put into operation, and only then will the payment be transferred.
