The Hindu : Front Page : 8 bids received for metro rail project

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Sunday, Jan 17, 2010
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8 bids received for metro rail project

Special Correspondent

Municipal Administration Minister happy with ‘overwhelming’ response

Fortress Limited has been appointed as the consulting agency to process the bids
Bids were called for after scrapping agreements with Maytas Infra-led consortium

HYDERABAD: A major milestone has been reached in respect of the long-delayed metro rail project of Hyderabad, with the government receiving pre-qualification bids from eight consortia to implement it through DBFOT mode (design, build, finance, operate and transfer) in spite of the present economic slowdown.

Reliance (Anil Ambani) group, GMR, L&T, Lanco–OHL (Spain), Essar Leighton (Australia)-Gayatri-VNR, GVK-Samsung (South Korea), Transstroy–OJSC (Russia)-CR 18 (China)-BHML and Soma-Strabag (Austria).

Financial quotations

Expressing happiness at the overwhelming response, Municipal Administration Minister A. Ramnarayan Reddy said at a press conference here on Saturday that the pre-qualification bids would be shortlisted by January 28 and relevant documents issued to the selected consortia to enable them to submit financial quotations within the purview of the project cost before April 9, 2010.

New concessionaire

He announced that the name of the new concessionaire would be finalised by April-end and works grounded by October 2010 with the aim of completing the project by 2014.

N.V.S. Reddy, MD, Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited, the agency that would have the documents processed on behalf of the government, said the project cost, however, was pegged at Rs. 12,132 crore in view of the fall in prices of cement and steel.

The Minister said Fortress Limited has been appointed as the consulting agency to process the bids, whereas the technical, financial and legal aspects would be examined by Barsyl, Deloitte, and Luthra & Luthra respectively.

In line with the guidelines laid down by the Chaturvedi Committee appointed by the Centre for such massive infrastructure projects, prior execution of projects worth Rs. 18,000 crore in the last 10 years (one and a half times the project cost), and owning a net worth of Rs. 3,000 crore were prescribed as eligibilities to apply for the pre-qualification bids.

The government had to call for fresh bids after scrapping the agreements signed with the previous consortia led by Maytas Infra-led consortium following its failure to achieve financial closure within the time-limit set.

The sum of Rs. 71 crore deposited by the Maytas consortium as security had been forfeited and the High Court did not stay the forfeiture.

Total length

As earlier, the metro rail will have a total length of 71.16 km covering three high traffic density corridors of the city, with 66 stations.

Also, the Centre and State government would offer Rs. 4,853 crore as viability gap funding (VGF) to the selected bidder. The Centre had sanctioned Rs. 2,363 crore as its share towards the VGF.

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