Hyderabad|India|March'2010: The Chief Minister Dr. K. Rosaiah made it amply clear that while the State Government continues to give major thrust to the rural development, it has become imperative to have a focussed and sustained development of the urban areas since the urban population is bursting on the seam in cities and towns. Hence the State Government have decided to develop cities like Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, Warangal, Vijayawada etc. into major cities and also to establish satellite townships in and around Hyderabad to ease congestion.

Meanwhile Hyderabad Metro Rail project is back on track. The Chief Minister discussed the progress of the Hyderabad Metro Rail Project with Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development, Anam Ram Narayan Reddy, Principal Secretary, MA&UD, T.S. Appa Rao and Hyderabad Metro Rail's Managing Director N V S Reddy. Mr Rosaiah asked the Minister and officials to speed up the process of finalisation of awarding the works with a firm deadline. He wanted the officials of the Metro Rail Project to closely monitor every stage of the project and see that the contractors strictly adhere to the milestone. The Chief Minister desired that the Project should be world class.

The Chief Minister said that Hyderabad is one of the fastest expanding city and traffic congestion continues to be one of the bottlenecks for its quick development since it is now regarded as one of the international cities. He said that is the reason why former Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekahara Reddy conceived the Hyderabad Metro Rail Project for easing the traffic problems in the city. He said it is one of the most prestigious project of the State Government and is very particular to complete it right on schedule.

The Chief Minister was informed by the officials that in good response to the fresh global pre-qualification notification for the project, eight well established companies/consortia applied for pre-qualification and on the basis of independent evaluation reports of their technical and financial credentials by reputed technical, legal and financial consultants, the State government pre-qualified all of them a few days ago to participate in financial bids.

The pre-qualification list includes 1.Transstroy-OJSC Transstroy (Russia)-CR18G (China)-BEML consortium; 2. Reliance Infra-Reliance Infocomm consortium (ADAG); 3. Lanco Infra-OHL Concesiones (Spain) consortium; 4. Essar-Leighton (Australia)-Gayatri-VNR consortium; 5.GMR Infra; 6. GVK-Samsung (South Korea) consortium; 7. Soma-Strabag AG (Austria) consortium and 8. Larsen & Toubro.

Mr Rosaiah was explained that the financial bids for the project are due in April and the new concessionaire is expected to be in place by May this year. The ground works for the project will be launched in November and most of the sections will be thrown open for public travel in 4 years, while the total project will be completed in 5 years.

The Chief Minister directed the officials that with the earlier experience of Maytas consortium’s failure to achieve financial closure, they should further tighten the pre-qualification criteria, apart from increasing the bid security from Rs.60 crore (0.5% of the project cost) to Rs.240 crore (2%), and performance security from Rs.240 crore (2%) to Rs.360 crore (3%).

Being implemented in public private partnership (PPP) mode with an estimated cost of Rs.12,132 crore, a maximum of 40% of the project cost can be given as viability gap funding by the central and state governments. The selection criterion in the financial bids is the lowest grant sought by the successful bidder and Government of India has already sanctioned Rs.2,363 crore as its share of gap funding for the project.

The Chief Minister was told that the Hyderabad Metro Rail system covers 3 high density traffic corridors of the city, spanning over 71 km. Providing a reliable, efficient and world-class public transport system and together with the Shamshabad international airport and the outer ring road (ORR), it will enable Hyderabad to emerge as a global city. A completely elevated metro system with state-of-the-art features including sophisticated signaling, high frequency trains with air-conditioned coaches, stations with escalators, air-conditioned feeder bus services and inter-modal integration.

Apart from providing a permanent solution for the traffic congestion and high pollution levels in the city, the project will generate mammoth economic activity in and around Hyderabad. It will provide employment for about 5,000 engineers and about 45,000 skilled and unskilled workers. The Chief Minister hoped that with a requirement of about 26 lakh tones of cement, 2 lakh tones of steel and 58 lakh cubic meters of concrete, the project will result in establishment of many ancillary industries and machinery manufacturing and servicing units around Hyderabad, giving fillip to developmental activities in various parts of Telangana region.
 

Reachout's News Bureau
March' 2010