The competitive bidding process to select an investor for the Dau Giay-Phan Thiet expressway under the public-private-partnership model kicked off in late November.
The competitive bidding process to select an investor for the Dau Giay-Phan Thiet expressway under the public-private-partnership model kicked off in late November.
A long-awaited ceremony to kick-start the process of selecting a second investor for the highway attracted representatives from the Ministry of Planning and Investment and Ministry of Transport (MoT).
“This is Vietnam’s first bidding of international investors for a PPP highway project,” said Hoang Dinh Phuc, general director of MoT’s Project Management Unit 1, assigned to oversee the road project.
Previously, the World Bank and MoT co-organised road shows in India, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea in July-August to promote the project to investors.
At the time the bid closed, seven international investors and investor consortiums had reportedly filed formal interest in the project.
They included, Egis Projects SA & Consortium of IJM Corp Berhad, VINCI Concessions from France, Hyundai E&C-Korea Expressway Corp, IL&FS Transportation Network and Oriental Structures Engineering PVT from India, and First Pacific & Metro Pacific Investment from Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Phuc said the investors will be competing to invest 40 per cent of the project’s total capital, the other part of which is held by Bitexco Group.
Investors passing the pre-qualifying round will take the standard request for proposals (RFP1) from the MoT.
According to regulations on executing the expressway project, these investors have the right to contribute their ideas to RFP1 before the RFP2 documents are distributed.
“Investors who pass the pre-qualifying round will hand in bidding records following the RFP2 model and the name of the successful bidder will be announced in late 2014,” Phuc said.
According to tender invitation records, viability gap funding (VGF) will be included and short-listed investors will do self-assessments of the project and set the VGF level they will need from the Vietnamese government.
The Dau Giay-Phan Thiet expressway has an estimated total investment of $757 million, to be shared between investors and funding from the government.
The government’s funding will come from a credit package from the International Development Association (IDA) and a loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). It is likely the IDA loan would be injected directly into the investment project while the IBRD loan would be re-lent to the project enterprise.
(Source:VIR)
