Filenews 6 November 2025 - by Vassos Vassiliou
MPs members of the parliamentary Audit Committee asked the Auditor General to investigate whether construction companies collude in order to take public bids and then inflate the bill at the expense of the state.
At the same time, both the chairman of the Committee, Zacharias Koulias, and MPs, criticized the fact that companies that were involved in bribing public officials and admitted it, have not been excluded from public offers. A lot of criticism has been levelled for inflating the public project bill, for unacceptable delays and for contractors who, among other things, leave public projects in the middle and at the same time, instead of being excluded, they are allowed to submit bids for other projects.
However, as stated by the Accountant General, Mr. Andreas Antoniadis, with the creation of an exclusion register from last August, at least on the issue of exclusion, the data will be differentiated for the better, since the public services that assign projects to contractors, will be able to rate/evaluate them as to whether they have cooperated and met their obligations during the execution of the projects.
Particular reference was made to 'Lois Builders Ltd' and criticism was made that while the company was delaying the implementation of projects, it was allowed to bid on other public projects. As clarified, the company was excluded from public projects in the period 2021-2023, but returned normally in 2024.
The relevant reports were made on the occasion of the presentation of a report by the Audit Office, which examined the assignment of public construction projects to contractors.
Presenting the findings on behalf of the Audit Office, Ms. Stalo Aristidou stated that three large contracting companies undertook 40.8% of the public works of the period 2015-2024, during which 2,164 contracts worth €2.5 billion were awarded.
As he explained, in total, Cyfield in the period 2015-2024 undertook 157 projects worth €563,955.27, the Iakovou Brothers undertook 84 projects worth €321,977,123 while Cybarco Ltd undertook 40 projects worth €140,976,255.
Regarding the implementation rates of the projects, he said that the average contract of each project is 601 days, while the average delay in the implementation of the projects is 461 days.
He also stated that in several cases of tenders (14.2%) only one bid had been submitted, which, in the end, was awarded to the one who submitted it.
The report referred to an oligopoly and a dominant position of the Cyfield group, stating that "a significant percentage of the total contract value was concentrated in a limited number of contractors".
"Specifically, three contractors (Cyfield, Iacovou and Cybarco), although together they undertook only 13% of the number of contracts, secured 40.8% of the total market value. This statistic indicates an increasing concentration of the market for large projects in specific contractors."
Regarding whether the Cyfield company has a dominant position in the market, the president of the Commission for the Protection of Competition (EPA) stated that with a 22% share in the implementation of public projects, she does not consider this to be the case.
