HYDERABAD: While the Empowered Committee debates the legal, financial and technological issues it is now becoming clear that there will be two separate special purpose vehicles (SPV) for Hyderabad's Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS).

Other than the Hyderabad Metro Rail Corporation, the selected Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) developer(s) will also form an SPV for construction, running and maintenance of the project.

The committee headed by Chief Secretary J. Harinarayana is also working on different contractual packages to be awarded to the prospective developers for which six national-international consortia are vying.

Financial bids

An independent engineer is also to be appointed to oversee the project construction since the term of the current technical consultant Span-SEMALY will cease to exist once it helps the Government in clearing the technical and financial bids, says Project Director N.V.S. Reddy.

Altogether, the committee held three meetings to examine in detail the issues of tender packages, technical specifications, performance criteria, State's share, Centre's grant, developer's role, concessionaire agreement and so on. Mr. Reddy claimed that the bid documents were by and large vetted. Considering this was perhaps the single largest project in the public-private partnership mode, there were several complex issues involved like obligations and warranties by each other to be studied.

Fare structure

"These are large gestation high risk projects, hence we have to look at the lenders' comfort, BOT developer's risk, financial intent of the State and public interest. We want to have private sector's efficiency while protecting larger interest of the society," he says. For instance, the fare structure will have to be `attractively' structured without causing much loss. Benchmarks are being set for quality, safety and reliability.

Such has been the detailing done by the committee that it has been looking into collision resistant and anti-climber features of the coaches, ergonomically designed drivers' cabins to reduce fatigue and automatic train control system where speed of a train is automatically controlled during a face off.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail