Award of contracts for airport revamp after financial evaluation 25 Jan 2006 - IANS
New Delhi: A government panel Tuesday finally shortlisted four bidders for modernising the Delhi and Mumbai airports and said the contracts would be awarded to contenders who promised the highest revenues. Briefing reporters after a meeting of the group of ministers led by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee made the final decision on the bidders, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said: "The bids of the eligible contenders will now be opened for financial evaluation. "The decision will be announced soon," Patel said. "We will examine the bids now on financial grounds and the consortia offering the highest revenue will bag the contracts for the two airports. "We have taken into consideration the inputs in the reports submitted by the committee of secretaries led by Cabinet Secretary B.K. Chaturvedi and also the panel led by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) chief Sreedharan," he said. The decision is expected to lead to the selection of bidders who will carry out the much-delayed modernisation of the two airports. Patel had earlier said the bidders would be selected by Jan 31 as the process had been delayed for too long. The group of ministers had last met Jan 12 and asked DMRC managing director E. Sreedharan tore-evaluate all six bidders who had initially filed tenders to bag the airport revamp contracts. Sreedharan had earlier short-listed only two bidders - the GMR and Reliance groups - that had qualified for the final round after an initial evaluation by the government. His rating, however, downgraded Reliance and eliminated it from the process. Sreedharan said the group failed to score the minimum 80 points needed to qualify for the tender process. The fresh rating meant only the GMR group had qualified and that only one airport would have a bid for its revamp. Sreedharan also recommended that a special purpose vehicle (SPV) be floated for the other airport that did not have a consortium bidding for it. The SPV would have the Airports Authority of India (AAI) with private partners, he said. This, however, was not acceptable to many in the government and even the civil aviation ministry made it clear that there was no scope for a SPV with the AAI. Sreedharan's report nevertheless could not be ignored completely and he was asked to re-evaluate Reliance along with four bidders he had left out earlier. The government first sought bids from local and overseas companies for a 74 percent share each in the two airport projects in June 2004. The plan was delayed for over a year because of opposition from lawmakers, after which the government cut to 49 percent the amount of stake overseas investors could pick up by amending the Airports Authority of India Act. Six consortia were in the race for the airport revamp after the withdrawal of Hochtief AG and Singapore Airport Changi Enterprises. While all the six bid for the Mumbai airport revamp, five of them were in the fray for the Delhi project. The five bidders for Delhi airport included GMR in a tie-up with Fraport, the operators of the Frankfurt airport, and Reliance, which had submitted a bid with ASA Mexico. The others in the fray were D.S. Construction that had a tie-up with Munich airport, Macquaire that tied up with Airport de Paris, and the Essel Group in association with the Turkish airport operator TAV. Apart from these five, the GVK group - which has a tie-up with the South African Airport - also contested for Mumbai.
