Announced earlier this year, the procurement of electric buses for North Macedonia has been cancelled. A new tender is to be expected. Most of the buses were planned for Skopje. The cancellation is a major blow for the winner of the tender.
The story of the bus procurement for Skopje spans for over five years. Tenders have been announced and cancelled. That Skopje buses are somewhat “specific” can be seen with a nude eye even for non-experts: Skopje is the only city in the world that runs Roadmaster (“red London-style “) doubledecker buses with left hand-drive.
They retake the old design to honor the support of London who had transferred some original buses to Skopje many years ago, but even after Brexit this design is not used in Britain any more. For the next purchase, even Skopje switched to articulated buses with more doors who allow to carry more passengers per driver and who are more user-friendly for handicapped, older or young passengers who can quickly enter and exit. The possibility to hop-on/hop off during slow driving, a key feature of the original roadmaster design which had an open rear platform, was never introduced to the Skopje buses.
The current tender has been in discussion from 2021 when the last tender for a very specific bus has been cancelled and many different players have been involved. The current tender does not hint to something specific on first view, taken apart that a large delegation from Hungary had presented their proposal before the establishment of the tender and this solution was finally chosen. There is no information about other tender participants, neither from major European players or from the Macedonian producer of such vehicles who stopped their production in 2024 without having placed a single vehicle in the Macedonian public transport. One of the reasons might be the relatively short delivery times for such a quantity of vehicles. They can only be fulfilled if the vehicles are already built or the production lines are empty.
The solution that was selected is Ikarus, a famous Hungarian brand that dominated the market in the COMECON area while Macedonia was producing buses with Mercedes licenses. (Also not to be confounded with Ikarbus, a company based in Belgrade). In these times, Ikarus was one of the largest bus producers in the world. With the end of COMECON, their market based on physical exchange instead of free trade faded quickly, the company was closed in 2006. Recently, the “China Railway Rolling stock Company” bought the brand to produce buses for Europe in Hungary and since 2025, they present their offer. Their bus business is a side business to their railway carriage production.
The Skopje tender would have been a major deal for the Chinese company in Europe. According to their social media posts, they had just finished a strategic step of delivering – 20 buses to Hungarian cities. From other countries, there are reports of test runs, a precondition of many cities before considering a purchase as the conditions like curbs, inclinations etc. are very different between cities and not all designs are a good, and more important, economical fit to every city. Briefly before the Hungarian elections, Ikarus announced a large school bus deal in Hungary, with the same type of city bus while dedicated school buses normally have a different design more suitable for the longer distances those vehicles normally travel.
That the Skopje tender has been canceled briefly after the governmental change in Hungary might be accidental. But it is worth noticing that such deals also depend on financing and guarantees for performance and warranty, and those depend very often on state institutions of the exporting countries. Without solid guarantees, bus operators might find themselves without spare parts and the vehicles become useless, an experience that the Macedonian railway has already made.
Till the arrival of the new buses, Skopje will continue to be served by the existing vehicle park. Some of the vehicles operated by private companies run since 30 years – showing the quality, durability and spare parts availability of the brands who built them.
Information about Ikarus today
Nezavisen: Nothing from electric buses from Hungary
Faktor: Procurement of buses canceled
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