NEW DELHI: The relaxations in bid conditions for the mega bridge project on Ganga River in Bihar – New Mahatma Gandhi Setu—have helped the government save Rs 611 crore, which was 25% less than the estimated project cost. The bid for the “extra-dosed bridge”, which will be the second one in the country, has been bagged by an Indian player.
“If the bid conditions were not tweaked to make standalone Indian players eligible, we would not have got a good response. We had invited tenders earlier this year with old conditions and had received seven bids. Four of these bidders had Chinese partners and in one of these bids a Chinese player was the lead partner. The norms were tweaked and fresh bids were invited in June,” said a road transport ministry official. He said Chinese, South Korean and Japanese players have more expertise in building such bridges.
An extra-dosed bridge is a hybrid of a girder bridge and a cable-stayed bridge.
Officials said earlier the companies needed to have seven years’ experience in execution of similar structures and the required financial net worth in the past five years to qualify for the project. “We combined these and set that the bidders should have combined experience of 12 years rather than segregating them. So, more Indian companies qualified for the work and we got better bids,” the officials said.
Against the estimated cost of Rs 2,411 crore, the road transport ministry bid out this 4-lane bridge at Rs 1,794 crore.
I K Pandey, director general of (road wing) in the road transport and highways ministry, said a number of relaxations have been introduced in the bid conditions for highway projects to enable more Indian players to qualify for projects without entering into joint ventures with foreign players. “These initiatives have been taken under the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ programme of the government. This will also help us create more competent domestic highway and structure builders,” he said.
Recently, highways minister Nitin Gadkari had also talked about how the government saved nearly Rs 4,000 crore by tweaking the Zojila Tunnel project in Jammu and Kashmir.