Expensive consultants
The Transport Ministry signed a contract with the Deloitte and Eurotarget companies for consulting in drawing EU funds. It will pay an hourly rate of €130 to the consultants, and the 4-year contract is capped at €8.6m. The contract is the result of a tender called by previous minister Ján Počiatek (Smer). His successor, Árpad Érsek (Most-Híd), has halved the initial contract volume of €17m. Érsek says that the ministry’s internal employees can perform many tasks previously conducted by various consultants. In the Počiatek tender, the winning bid was the only one permitted, as competing bids by PricewaterhouseCoopers, VÚD and NDCon were excluded.
Grant Thornton has been providing consulting services in EU fund drawing at the Education Ministry with an hourly rate of €95. On the other hand, PricewaterhouseCoopers charges €370 per hour for its consultants in the PPP project of the Bratislava highway bypass.
