In an impetus to the proposed Mumbai Trans- Harbour Link connecting Sewri with Nhava, the ministry of finance, government of India, on Friday gave its nod to issue viability gap funding (VGF). The sanction is to the tune of `1,920 crores of the `9,630-crore project. With the clearance, officials say construction will commence by 2013-end and only to be thrown open for public by 2019.
“With the finance minister approving the VGF proposal, this means all the approvals from the government of India are in place. Now we are in a position to invite request for proposal,” announced Rahul Asthana, metropolitan commissioner, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).
As per the procedure, the five short-listed consortiums will now compete to submit detailed design by the end of April. This will be followed by awarding the works to the bidder in the month of May. Another eight to nine months will go in achieving financial closure. Thus, by 2013-end or early next year the construction work for 22-km-long sea-link will commence.
The five short-listed consortiums are CINTRA-SOMA-SREI Consortium, Gammon Infrastructure Projects Ltd-OHL Concessions-G.S. Engin-eering Consortium, GMR Infrastructure Ltd, L&T Ltd, Samsung C&T Corpn. Consortium, IRB Infrastructure Developers Ltd., Hyundai Consortium and the Tata Realty and Infrastructure Ltd. , Autostrade Indian Infrastructure Devel-opment Pvt. Ltd., Vinci Concessions Development V Pte Ltd. Consortium. The consortiums were evaluated by KPMG-Arup consultants.