Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMR), one of the country?s much delayed and crucial infrastructure projects, is all set to get a new lease of life. Defense public sector unit BEML is in the process of placing financial bids for the project through a consortium formed in association with Russian and Chinese infrastructure firms.
The BEML-led consortium comprises four partners. Other companies are Russian infrastructure major Transstroy, its Indian subsidiary Transstroy India, which will be the lead partner, and Chinese construction company CR18G.
Talking to FE, BEML chairman and managing director VRS Natarajan said, ?Hopefully, our consortium will win the project as we have several advantages.? If the consortium bags the project, BEML will get the benefit of supplying more than 300 metro cars for the project that would fetch around Rs 3,000 crore to the company, Natarajan said.
The 71-km elevated metro rail project will be done in a public-private-partnership model on the basis of design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT). While other companies in the consortium will take care of design and construction, BEML would be responsible for supplying rolling stocks and spare parts, Natarajan added.
BEML has already won metro car orders from Bangalore and Delhi Metro Rail Corporations. The company won an order worth Rs 1,670 crore to supply 192 metro cars to Delhi Metro. It has bagged another order worth Rs 1,672 crore from Bangalore Metro for 150 cars. BEML is the only Indian company having exclusive manufacturing facility to assemble metro cars in India.
The HMR project has been in limbo since it was announced three years ago. With no shortlisted bidders coming forward to submit financial bids, the government has extended the deadline four times in the past two months.
The state government had earlier set April 9 as the deadline, and extended it to April 21 and then till June 7. Earlier this year, eight consortia had qualified to file the financial bids including those led by Reliance Infrastructure, Lanco Infratech, GVK, L&T, Soma-Straburg, Transstroy and Essar Group.
The government invited fresh global bids in July last year after scrapping the deal with Maytas, as it failed to achieve financial closure.
The project has been designed with an outlay of Rs 12,123 crore and upto 40% of the project cost could be given as viability gap funding by both the Centre and the state government, subject to competitive bidding. The Union government has sanctioned Rs 2,363 crore as its share under the VGF scheme.