Complaint halts Belgrade's 29-tram overhaul tender

The estimated value of the job is 5,274,000,000 dinars (~44.5 million euros). The procurement procedure for the overhaul of Belgrade’s CAF trams, launched by the Belgrade City Transport Company (GSP) on June 19, 2026, has been suspended after a bidder filed a request for protection of rights. The suspension was announced by the Centre for Local Government (CLS). Bids had been due on July 24, and GSP cannot move the procedure forward until the complaint is decided.

What the 44.5 million euro job covers

The contract covers 29 low-floor CAF trams, fleet numbers 1501 to 1530. Each vehicle is built from five modules, labelled C1, S1, M, S2 and C2, so the work is priced per full trainset rather than per unit.

Core specifications from the tender file:

• 32.366 metres long, 2.3 metres wide, 3.6 metres high with the pantograph lowered
• empty weight of 38,500 kilograms
• 71 fixed seats and six folding seats, plus two wheelchair spaces
• between 91 and 151 standing places
• floor height of 350 millimetres, door threshold of 300 millimetres
• top operating speed of 60 kilometres per hour

At the upper end of the range, a single trainset carries 228 seated and standing passengers. That is the capacity riding on every day the series spends without its scheduled overhaul.

Why did the procedure stop?

The formal reason is the request for protection of rights, which suspends a Serbian procurement procedure automatically. CLS director Nikola Jovanovic called the suspension “a heavy blow to public transport”.

Industry sources cited by the organisation say the tender was poorly prepared and that larger factories and overhaul workshops were not notified in time. If that holds up, the weak point is not price but the size of the bidding field: a job of this scale needs several experienced overhaul contractors competing, and the city’s previous tram tender died with a single bid on the table.

An overhaul at 1.53 million, a new tram at 2.66

Divided across 29 vehicles, the estimate works out to roughly 181.9 million dinars per tram, or about 1.53 million euros. The figure only means something next to the alternative.

In the tender for 85 new short trams that collapsed in late July, the sole bid, from Turkey’s Bozankaya, came in at 2.66 million euros per vehicle including VAT. An overhaul therefore runs at about 58 percent of the price of a new car, though it extends the life of the existing fleet rather than enlarging it. That tender was worth 226 million euros in total.

The third city vehicle purchase to fall through

The sequence is tight. The overhaul tender went out on June 19, bids were due on July 24, and on that same day the collapse of the 85-tram tender was made public. A trolleybus purchase had been called off two days earlier. The overhaul suspension came on August 1.

According to the Centar union at GSP Belgrade, the new-vehicle tender failed because the City did not secure an advance payment of 22 million euros, roughly 9.7 percent of the contract value. Union president Ivan Bankovic said that the state of the public transport system and the City’s debts to GSP make buying vehicles through the City impossible. The same CLS statement also flags problems with Bozankaya trams already delivered.

What happens while the complaint stands

Until the request for protection of rights is ruled on, the 29 CAF trams stay in regular service with no scheduled work done. If the procedure is annulled and relaunched, everything restarts: fresh documentation, a fresh bid deadline and a fresh valuation, since the current 5.27 billion dinar figure was set in June.

The next hard date is the ruling on the complaint. It decides whether the bids get opened at all, or whether GSP starts over with the same vehicles and a fleet another year older.