NEW DELHI: The Indian railways said Wednesday that 15 companies, including Arvind Aviation, Cube Roads, Gateway Rail Transportation, L&T, IRB, GMR highways, state property BHEL and PSU railroad, IRCTC among others, have submitted offers to qualify to run passenger trains under the public-private partnership (PPP) mode.
The railways received 120 offers for 12 groups, including Delhi, Mumbai, Nagpur, Chennai, Howrah, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Patna and Secunderabad. A maximum of 12 offers were received each for the second group from Mumbai and New Delhi. For the Bengaluru cluster, there are 11 bidders.
the ministry He said that Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarrriles (CAF), Megha Ingeniería e Infraestructura, RK Associates and Hoteleros and Welspun Enterprises, based in Spain, are some of the other companies that submitted their applications. The railways had seen a higher level of interest in the pre-bid meetings. But some firms such as Bombardier, which had participated in them, did not bid for the project.
The Railways Ministry said the bids were opened on Wednesday in response to the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) submitted by it for passenger train services comprising 140 pairs of origin and destination routes by introducing 151 modern trains.
This is the first major initiative to attract private investment for the operation of passenger trains on the rail network. The project is expected to involve private sector investment of approximately Rs 30 billion.
Officials said only qualified bidders will be able to submit bids. The railways have set a February 2021 target for awarding the project and their goal is to introduce 12 trains by March 2023 and 45 in 2023-2024.
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