Even as the board of the Jawaharlal Nehru port (JNPT) decided to award the Rs 8,200 crore container terminal project through a single tender, some experts support the earlier decision of splitting the project.
The earlier decision to split the contract into two was supported by the trade, terminal operators and consultants alike. They felt that splitting the project into two would allow smaller firms to bid and bank funding would be easier.
It would also have led to competition between two terminal operators rather than the creation of a monopoly with one firm controlling the 4.8 million standard container capacity, which is 120 percent of the portÂ’s current capacity of 3.6 million standard containers.
Originally, the port wanted to award the project through a single contract. But later it decided to award it in two different contracts owing to poor response from bidders. Recently, on May 29, the board of JNPT decided to adopt the original plan of going for a single contract.
One of the key changes in the original tender for the single terminal and the new one issued on June 1, is that the latter does not involve the shifting of a liquid cargo jetty run by state-run refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp. to a location some 2 km away, thus saving at least Rs 500 crore.
During the May 29 meeting, the board of trustees was of the view that splitting the project was not economically viable.
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