Spain's Avanza wins concession for Lisbon subway, bus and tram lines

LISBON, June 19 (Reuters) - Unlisted Spanish transport company Avanza has won a concession to run Lisbon's bus, tram and subway networks, a spokesman for Portugal's Economy Ministry said on Friday.

The details of the offer for the right to operate indebted public transport companies - Lisbon Metro and Carris - were not immediately known. The government sought to sell the concession to save public coffers tens of millions of euros in investment for much-needed fleet renewal and maintenance.

Avanza was picked over France's RATP, which operates the Paris Metro and French bus and railway lines, Britain's National Express (NYSE: EXPR - news) , a consortium of Portuguese bus company Barraqueiro and the local unit of Spain's TMB (Taiwan OTC: 4147.TWO - news) /Moventis, as well as international transport company Transdev.

The Carris ground contract runs for eight years and the Lisbon Metro contract for nine years.

Along with privatisation of national infrastructure assets, the liberalisation of the public transport market was one of the conditions of Portugal's bailout programme which it exited last year having far overshot its sell-off revenue target.

(Reporting By Andrei Khalip, editing by Axel Bugge)