Today, July 6, is the closing date of the invitation to tender for the laying of an interlink cable between Malta and Sicily.

Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said this when he answered a parliamentary question by Labour MP Leo Brincat, who had asked when feasibility studies on the interlink cable had started and ended, who had done them, how the consultancy firms had been selected and how much they had been paid.

Mr Brincat had also asked which company or companies had been involved in the preparation of the tender document, and who had been involved in the shortlisting of the preferred bidders.

In his answer, minister Fenech added that Enemalta Corporation and Terna, as the distribution and transmission operators in Malta and Italy respectively, had carried out a joint feasibility study between 2008 and 2009. The costs of the study, a total of €260,000, had been shared by the two corporations according to their respective contributions. The tender for the interconnector had been prepared by Enemalta on the basis of information collected from the joint study.

The shortlisting of the bidders to the request for proposals had been made by an adjudication committee set up by the Department of Contracts. The evaluation and adjudication would be done by committees also appointed by the department, which had been involved in the tendering process all the way.