October 08, 2008

Hyderabad metro rail project approved

Andhra Pradesh government announced that union government has given in principle approval for the INR 9,696 crore elevated Hyderabad Metro Rail project.

Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy chief minister of AP said that this is the first public private partnership metro project has been approved by union government. He added that "Central government has allowed Andhra Pradesh to call for financial bids from the 5 pre qualified consortia. The bids will be invited on April 18th 2008 and the bidders will be given 2 months’ time to submit their financial bids for the 71.16 kilometer project."

The 5 international consortia of companies that have pre qualified as prospective bidders for the build own transfer project are
1) Essar Constructions, with SREI, Singapore MRT, SEC and STE
2) Consortium of Magna Allmore, Siemens AG, ETA and NCC
3) Reliance Energy and Bombardier
4) GVK Alstom with partners
5) Navbharat, Maytas, Ital Thai and IL&FS

Mr Reddy said that all the 3 lines of the metro rail route would be taken up simultaneously. He added that "There has been an increase in the cost of the project by INR 1,214 crore because of the increase in the length of the metro by 5 kilometer on one of the lines."

According to him, the government of India under the viability gap funding will provide 20% of the project cost and is also considering grant of another 10% under the JNNURM grant. He added that "While the state government will grant 10%, the rest of the INR 5,819 crore has to be invested by the developer, which is around 60% of the total project cost. Also the land will be provided by the state government free of cost for the project."