No takers for Mumbai's water transport plan

Worries that the liquidity crunch private players are battling could affect Mumbai’s ambitious infrastructure projects hit home earlier this week, when officials of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) telephoned a handful of private firms that had shown interest in bidding for the agency’s Inland Passenger Water Transport Project. For, while November 6 was the last date to submit bids, the government agency had received none.
“Ten prospective bidders had purchased the bid documents from us, but no one submitted the bids,” said Satish Gavai, managing director of the MSRDC, adding that fresh tenders will now be floated, the third time tenders will be called for the much-delayed project.
“We enquired with the parties that had bought the forms from us, but they declined to take part in the bidding process fearing losses due to the global economic slump.” After the state government conceived a project to exploit the Arabian Sea for mass transport in Mumbai in the 1990s, the MSRDC was appointed nodal agency for its implementation. According to the plan, airconditioned hovercrafts or catamarans were to ferry passengers from Borivali through Marve, Versova, Juhu and Bandra to Nariman Point, with swank terminals and jetties being constructed at each stop.
After a series of delays, the contract to build and run the system for a 30-year concession period was awarded to Satyagiri Shipping Ltd in December 2004, only to be cancelled earlier this year after the government took objection to repeated changes in the winning bidder’s consortium partners.
Fresh tenders had been floated in October this year. “The base price was Rs 1,100 crore,” said Gavai. That is close to the figure Satyagiri had quoted — Rs 1,012 crore.MSRDC officials admitted that investing such a large sum— a sizeable bank guarantee to be given upfront would be involved to— seemed daunting for the bidders who purchased the bid documents. While fresh tenders were to be floated immediately after the cancellation of Satyagiri’s award, bidders first requested that the bidding process be initiated after the monsoon.“The bidders wanted to conduct surveys on cost feasibility before bidding, but that could not be done then due to the choppy seas. So the bidders had requested us to postpone the date of bidding,” added Gavai.
With the economic scenario taking a turn for the worse since, the MSRDC is now faced with the unpalatable task of re-tendering, with little hope for a better response the next time.