2023-11-25 13:16:36
At the end of the call for tenders, the public company’s competitors, PPP and Proximy, came out on top. The first for the distribution of daily newspapers, the second for periodicals.
The distribution of daily and periodical press in Belgium by bpost could be in its final months, L’Echo learned from reliable sources on Friday. The public company listed on the stock exchange did not indeed win the market which pitted it against two competitors, PPP and the French Proximy, for the renewal of this concession which will expire on December 31.
In any case, this is what emerges of the European tender procedure organized by the FPS Economy for a new State concession, running from 2024 to 2028, was able to overlap with L’Echo. She rises as a reminder, at 125 million euros per year. This historic mission of bpost represents several thousand jobs. The restricted Council of Ministers is expected to examine this contract next week.
PPP submitted the best proposal for newspaper distribution, while Proximy would win for that of periodicals. When asked, Pierre-Yves Dermagne, PS Minister of the Economy, refused to comment. Just like the SPF Economy.
Mailfor his part, hopes to “obtain clarification quickly”, the company reacted this Saturday upon reading our article. “In this way we learned of the possible latest developments in the press concession file. The Belgian Government must now decide as to the validity of the applications and with which candidates it intends to continue the process. […] Even though we have a lot of questions at the moment, we remain focused on our work.”
A company in turmoil
This new situation would mark the end of an era while this concession has been the subject of in-depth investigations for several months and that the company seems to have settled into turmoil.
At the start of 2023, the discovery of an agreement between bpost and PPP, precisely within the framework of the press concession renewal market, had triggered the launch of an audit. A few weeks later, this was extended to all missions carried out by the company on behalf of the State.
Irregularities were noted for three of them: the management of state bank accounts, the production and distribution of license plates, as well as the processing of traffic fines. Possible illegal state aid and overbilling had pushed the company to provision 75 million euros to cover everything.
Initially, the desire of part of the government, especially Open VLD, was to reduce the budget allocated to bpost for press distribution. This government reduced it from 175 to 125 million.
In the event of loss of the contract, the procedure provides a transitional period of six months during which bpost would continue to distribute newspapers. However, such a scenario remains a hard blow for the company which could return to the game as a subcontractor. According to some players in the sector, it is in fact not certain that PPP can cover the entire country without a partner.
1700928087
#Bpost #verge #losing #newspaper #distribution