The ferry "Prizna", which was recently purchased in Croatia by the Public Company for the Management of Marine Resources (JPMD) from Budva, will start regular traffic on the Kamenari-Lepetane line tomorrow at seven o'clock through the Veriga Strait in Boka Kotorska.
This was announced today by the JPMD after this morning, as they say, they performed a "successful test landing" at the docks in Lepetani and Kamenari, of the ferry, which in the meantime received a new name "Thirdest August".
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On Friday afternoon, the previous "Prizna" was officially registered under a new name in the Register of Ships of the Merchant Navy of Montenegro and received an extract from the Register of Ships maintained by the Port Authority of Kotor.
This ship, built in 1970 in Sweden, is 54 meters long, 13,72 meters wide, and has a draft of 2,5 meters.
It is powered by four Scania diesel engines with a total power of 1.080 horsepower via two special, so-called Voith Schneider propellers (VSP), with which the ship, which can load about forty road vehicles, reaches a maximum sailing speed of eight knots.
On Friday, the Technical Inspectorate of the Maritime Safety and Port Management Administration of Montenegro (UPSUL) issued a temporary and conditional Certificate of Seaworthiness stating that the ship was inspected "in accordance with the requirements of Part 1 Rules for the technical supervision of maritime ships UPSUL" and that "the inspection determined that the condition of the structure, machinery and equipment is satisfactory and that the ship for the specified purpose and navigation area meets the requirements of the Rules for the technical supervision of maritime points".
In the Seaworthiness Certificate issued by the UPSUL to "Thirtieth August" and signed by the head of the Technical Inspectorate, graduate engineer Milo Radović, it is stated that the ship has a gross tonnage of 307, and is assigned the least demanding navigation area 4 (navigation in internal sea waters and territorial by the sea of Montenegro) and stipulated that a maximum of 310 persons can be found on it at the same time.
The seaworthiness certificate issued by UPSUL is valid for this ferry until May 21 of this year "with the condition that annual/intermediate inspection/periodic inspections are carried out in the specified period in accordance with the requirements of the UPSUL Technical Rules".
In essence, this meant that the Montenegrin UPSUL did not fully accept the current and until now valid certificate on the correctness of the previous "Prizna" as a ro-ro passenger ship (ferry), which was issued to that ship by the Croatian Register of Ships from Split, and which, by the way, had valid until May 21, 2026.
JPMD bought "Prizna" for 569.000 euros from the company ABM Tours from Neviđan on the island of Pašman in Croatia.
On February 28, through the public procurement portal of Montenegro, the Maritime Administration published an advertisement for the "procurement of a ferry for the transport of vehicles and passengers with a stern and bow ramp, i.e. a RORO passenger ship", and in terms of the technical characteristics of the requested vessel, the ferry "Prizna" was almost "drawn". .
By the way, "Vijesti" announced the day before that JPMD in Croatia will buy this particular ship.
By the way, "Prizna" became a subsidiary of ABM Tours a few months ago, after the previous long-term owner of that ferry - the Croatian public shipping company "Jadrlolinija" from Rijeka, previously on three occasions during most of 2022, tried to replace the technologically outdated and outdated "Prizna" was sold at a public auction at a starting price that, depending on the time when the ads were advertised, ranged from 80.000 to 150.000 euros.
The estimated value of the purchase of this ferry, which was acquired half a year after "Jadrolinija" sold "Prizna" to ABM Tours, by the Montenegrin state enterprise Morsko dobro, was as much as 570.000 euros without VAT.
On March 2, the Croatian company from the island of Pašman sent Morsko dobr an initial offer for the sale of its ferry "Prizna", for which they asked for exactly what JPMD offered - 570.000 euros.
The state-owned company headed by the Chairman of the Board of Directors Blažo Rađenović (URA) and the Executive Director Mladen Mikijelj (DF) then, as stated in the Decision on the selection of the most favorable offer, conducted negotiations "in order to reduce the price", and managed to reduce the offer of ABM Tours from the initial 570.000 euros to the final 569.000 euros without VAT.
Since it had previously received consent from the Government to buy the ferry as an urgent public procurement, Morsko Dobra will be charged VAT at a rate of zero percent on this purchase of the "Prize".
Although the sales contract was signed by the director of Morski Dobr on March 4, and by the director of ABM Tours, Anto Milolović, only on March 6, "Prizna" already sailed from Pašman on February 29 for Montenegro, where it arrived in the late afternoon of the 3rd. March, when the ship sailed into the port of Zelenika.
The ship, as stated in the official papers published on the public procurement portal, was only then inspected in Zelenica by a team of inspectors from the Technical Inspectorate of Navigable and Floating Objects of the Maritime Safety and Port Management Administration of Montenegro - just a few hours before the next day, the management Morski Dobr formally adopted the "Decision on the selection of the most favorable offer" in this procurement.
Although "Prizna" was purchased in a way that does not foresee the regular procedure of the Law on Public Procurement, because the Government gave the green light to the Maritime Authority to urgently buy ferries for the maintenance of the Kamenari-Lepetane line, which the company took over on February 18, the director of JPMD Mladen Mikijelj denied that this was done in direct negotiations with the owner of this ship from Croatia until recently.
"Another fake news is that the ferry was bought under a direct contract. It is absolutely not true. We will call for tenders for this and all subsequent ferries. So, a tender was called, but it was almost certain that the amount that we applied for was not it is possible to get another ferry on the market. We applied for the amount of 570.000 euros," said Mikijelj during a guest appearance on the TV Vijesti program last week.
However, data from the public procurement portal of Montenegro, as well as from the Decision on the selection of the most favorable offer of Morski Dobro from March 4, clearly state that this public procurement was carried out through a "negotiation procedure without prior publication of the call for tenders".
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