A consortium of infra majors L&T, Japan-based Sojitz and Gayatri may bag a project of over ₹4,700 crore for civil construction work of the Iqbalgarh-Vadodara stretch of the Western rail freight corridor. The consortium has emerged as the best bidder, sources told BusinessLine .
“They have offered to do the project for about ₹4,700-4,800 crore,” said a source close to the development.
The per kilometre cost for the 308-km project comes to around ₹15-16 crore.
The other bidder for this project was a consortium of Tata Projects, Ircon, GMR and Mitsui.
The Railway Ministry had targeted the award of this project by January 2016.
While the cost is high on a per km basis, it is higher due to multiple rail flyovers that would be built, say officials.
“We had estimated the cost at ₹5,000 crore. The cost also depends on the number of bridges, structures and terminals. As the track is not parallel to the railway track, the quantity of earthwork used will be higher compared with other projects,” said another source.
Incidentally, in 2013, the L&T-Sojitz consortium has won a project to implement the 639-km stretch of civil work between Rewari and Iqbalgarh at ₹6,700 crore, which worked out to be ₹10.7 crore/km of track.
The rails for this project were to be imported from Japan.
The Western rail freight corridor has been part funded by Japan’s finance arm JICA.
The loan conditions stipulate sourcing 30 per cent of the project cost from Japanese firms.
In 2013, a consortium of Tata-Aldesa had also bagged the Bhaupur-Khurja project for ₹3,300 crore, which works out to ₹9.6 crore/km.
As per targets set by the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd, the 655-km Rewari-Iqbalgarh track is supposed to be commissioned in June 2018, the 308-km Iqbalgarh-Vadodara will be commissioned in October 2019, the 430-km Vadodara-JN Port track will be commissioned in October 2019, and the 127-km Rewari-Dadri track will be commissioned in October 2019.