State institutions in North Macedonia have purchased 392 new vehicles and for that purpose in the last 2.5 years have spent 8.1 million EUR, shows the latest research conducted by the Center for Civic Communications.
“One quarter of the newly purchased vehicles cost more than 30.000 EUR. Most of the new vehicles were purchased by the Government’s Department for General and Common Affairs, 46 automobiles Volkswagen Passat, each costing 39.000 EUR. Still, the most expensive vehicle was purchased by the Municipality of Struga and it costs 66.000 EUR. The mean price of the vehicles purchased by state institutions is 17.000 EUR. Among the brands, Skoda and Volkswagen are the most purchased brands, with 100 vehicles i.e. 88 brand new vehicles. Almost half of the newly purchased vehicles are from one of these brands. The Volkswagen Passat model leads with purchased 53 vehicles while half of the purchased Skoda vehicles are of the Octavia model, states the research.
Regarding the companies, the contracts with Porshe Leasing have the highest value with an amount of 3 million EUR, “Deluxe-Auto” from Kumanovo with 1.2 Million EUR, Euroimpex with 890.000 EUR and the Josifov company from Bitola with 720.000 EUR.
There was almost no competition in the tendering. Exactly 71% of the tenders had only one bidder, although there are lots of auto dealerships in the country. This raises a suspicion that the state institutions bought the vehicles they planned to buy beforehand, the research concludes.
