Bids for convention centres soon

 The Centre will soon invite bids from multinational hotel and construction majors to build international convention centres in several states.

 The bids are likely to be called by the ministry of tourism, while the finance ministry will evaluate them based on the minimum viability gap criterion quoted by the bidders.

 Under the viability gap model, the government proposes to bridge the gap between the internal rate of return of a project and the actual returns generated from it.

 According to finance ministry sources, it has not yet been decided whether foreign players will be allowed to bid for building the convention centres directly or will be required to rope in domestic companies as partners.

 Finance Minister Jaswant Singh had announced setting up of two international convention centres at an estimated cost of Rs 1,000 crore in the Budget for 2003-04.

 The ministry