Gammon, Essar and Adanis going to develop Vizhinjam International Seaport
Five main port operators have shown interest in the global tender floated by Vizhinjam International Seaport Ltd (VISL). The operators who have shown interest in tender are Gammon Infrastructure Projects; the Hyundai-Concast consortium; Essar Ports; Adani Ports; and Srei-OHL, a consortium of Srei Infra and Spanish construction company Obrascón Huarte Lain.
VISL had asked for Requests for Qualification (RFQ) to construct the port structure and run the proposed deepwater port and container transhipment terminal at Vizhinjam which is 16 Km far from Thiruvananthapuram. The same operators have also answered to the other RFQ for engineering, procurement and construction works floated separately. The last date of first tender ended on Monday, whereas the last date of second tender valid till 30 June.
VISL’s opinion is that the same entity should work on both the projects, taking cue from the centre’s thinking of having the same agency in the case of big projects. A source says that the purpose is to avoid the condition which occurred in Delhi Airport Metro project after involving a Reliance Infra subsidiary.
At same time, the RFQs would be inspected by VISL’s technical and legal consultants and their report will handed over to the empowered committee led by the Chief Secretary, Kerala. After clearing all these conditions, the entity will able to serve the request for proposal documents.
AS Suresh Babu, MD and CEO of VISL says that the cost of this big project is around 5,000 crore according to global calculation. The fact that five leading operators were attracted towards the project is a major advertisement of this project.
Cabotage Exemption
Planning commission strongly suggested for relaxation in Cabotage rules. In this connection, AS Suresh Babu, MD and CEO of VISL did not expect the model code of conduct to come in the way of a formal announcement in this connection. The reason for this is that Vizhinjam has been a work in progress for a long time and any incremental decision on it would only be matter of routine procedure.
Source: The Business Line
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