Hyderabad Metro update

Minutes after the last date for submitting prequalified and technical bids for the Hyderabad Metro Rail Project ended on Saturday, the state government announced the names of the eight Hyderabad-based and Indian companies that have submitted bids as part of an international consortium for the Rs 12,132 crore project. Municipal administration minister A Ramnarayan Reddy said the companies are L&T-Lanco-OHL (Spain); Reliance; Essar-Leighton (Australia); Gayatri-VNR consortium; GVK-Samsung (South Korea);GMR-Transstroy-OJSC (Russia)-CR 18 (China); BEML consortium and Soma-Strabag (Austria) consortium. He said that the government would complete the verification of the bids in the next 12 days and names would be shortlisted by Jan. 28. The firms would have to submit the financial bids by April 9. The central and state governments are providing 40 per cent Viability Gap Funding for the project which got derailed after the B Ramalinga Raju family-owned Maytas Infra plunged into a crisis after the Satyam scam in Jan. 2009. The state later cancelled the pact with Maytas Infra-led consortium as it could not secure financial closure by the deadline of March 2009. While the minister said the groundwork would begin in October this year and the project would be completed by 2014, HMR Project MD NVS Reddy claimed there would not be any cost escalation as prices of cement and steel have come down. The MD also said that as per the request for qualification (RFQ) conditions, the companies/consortia to be pre-qualified to compete for the project should have a minimum net worth of Rs 3,000 crore and that they should have executed projects/contracts worth Rs 18,000 crore in the past 10 years. In case of consortium, the technical and financial credentials of only those companies which invest a minimum of 26 per cent of the equity and 5 per cent of the total project cost would be considered.