Seven firms across the country have shown interest in the underground cable project that is to be taken up in Visakhapatnam. The first phase of the same will most likely be set to begin in the next fiscal year of 2017-18.
The first phase will come up in MVP Colony and its surrounding areas – including Lawson’s Bay. It will have six sub-stations and will come up at a cost of Rs 230 crore. Seven firms have evinced interest by taking part in a technical bid and depositing an investment of Rs 4.5 crore for security. These seven firms are Vijay Electricals Ltd (Hyderabad), GVPR Engineers Ltd (Hyderabad), L&T India (Chennai), BMC Electroplast (Kolkata), KEI Industries (New Delhi), Gupta Power Infra Ltd (Odisha) and Vindhya Power Pvt Ltd (Hyderabad).
A project monitoring unit at Hyderabad will now pick eligible firms for the financial bid round. It will take at least 2 weeks to pick the same as each firm has sent in reports as long as 1000 pages that need to be analysed. After this, the name of the bidder will be sent to the World Bank team. But if none of the firms qualify, a fresh tender will have to be issued for the project again. However, the chances for that are low as the bidders are all experienced enough to handle a 10 KM long underground power cabling project.
The financial bidding process will be taken up in April with the formalities being completed by the end of May. The formalities include decisions of the World Bank, the CM and the union ministry’s clearances. Once all the formalities are done, the bidder will have 18 months’ time to complete the underground cable project.
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