MMRDA to invite bids for trans-harbour project next week

The 22-km long, Rs 8,300 crore  Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) project that connects Sewri and Nhava port is finally set to take off. The state-run Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) would issue request for qualification (RFQ) for the project, which is crucial to decongest the city.

Though bids were invited for the project twice, it could not take off and was later caught in controversy between the ruling Congress and Nationalist Congress Party over the nodal agency for the project. Congress wanted the MMRDA, which comes under direct control of the chief minister-led urban development department, to be the nodal agency while NCP insisted that the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation be the implementing agency.

Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, at the India Economic Summit here on Monday, told Business Standard, “RFQ will be invited next week for MTHL project. The project, which was bid for twice, could not take off. However, the government is quite sure that the investors would participate during the proposed bidding process.” 

MTHL is one of the key transport infrastructure projects being pursued by the state government and is to be declared a national project by the central government in order to enable it to get higher viability gap funding. The state government has undertaken infrastructure projects worth $60 billion (Rs 3,00,000 crore) in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

MMRDA official said it was already in talks with the World Bank to get funding for the MTHL project. World Bank had earlier tied up with the MMRDA to fund the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP). In August, the MMRDA had appointed a consortium of Arup Consulting Engineers and KPMG to conduct a techno-economic feasibility study of the MTHL.