Bahrain's Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunication (MTT) has announced that 11 leading global infrastructure majors including French sustainable mobility expert Alstom, Korea's Hyundai Engineering and Indian construction conglomerate Larsen and Toubro (L&T) in addition to Chinese heavyweights Harbour Engineering and China Railway Group and Egyptian builder Orascom have been prequalified for the first phase of 109-km-long Bahrain Metro system. 

 

Being implemented in four phases, Bahrain Metro's Phase One comprises two lines running 29 km long covering 20 stations. 

 

MTT said it is looking to procure the project as an integrated public private partnership (PPP) through a two-stage process comprising a prequalification followed by the main tender process. 

 

According to the ministry, the selected private partner will implement the project on DBFOMT (Design, Build, Finance, Operate, Maintain, Transfer) basis with a contract period of 35 years.

 

The list of the pre-qualified bidders for the project include top international companies Alstom Transport (France); Hyundai Engineering & Construction (South Korea); L&T (India); Plenary Asia (Singapore); Harbour Engineering and China Railway Group (China); Virtue Global Holding (UK) and CRRC (Hong Kong) Company in addition to regional heavyweight Orascom Construction (Egypt).

 

Two of Bahrain's leading utility majors - Aradous Energy Generation Company and Taqi Mohammed Albahrana Trading Establishment - are also in the fray.

 

Estimated to cost around $2 billion, the Bahrain Metro project marks an important milestone as it will provide a fast, comfortable, reliable, sustainable and modern transportation system in the kingdom, thereby improving the standards of living, said the ministry in its statement.

 

With this state-of the art, fully automated, driverless Metro system, MTT plans to develop an efficient public transport service in the kingdom, it added.-TradeArabia News Service