NHFB missive to Transport Ministry

The National Highways Builder Federation (NHFB) in a missive to the Union Road Transport Ministry and National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has urged the government to scrap the technical threshold capacity limit clause added in the new request for qualification (RFQ) set for highway projects.

According to the new threshold limit clause, in order to bid for a project of a certain cost, the bidder should have had the experience of implementing projects at least twice the cost in the preceding five years.  In the earlier version of the RFQ, the clause stated that the bidder should have collected an amount equivalent to the project cost in the five year preceding period.

Citing an instance, the federation pointed out that in the six-laning 250 kms of Udaipur-Ahmedabad national highway section, the estimated project cost is Rs. 1,750 crore.  For this, the qualifying bidders are now required to have collected Rs. 3,500 crore of revenues from build operate transfer (BOT) projects in the five preceding years.  Earlier, the qualified bidders were required to have collected Rs. 1750 crore of BOT revenues in the five year period.

Similarly, the missive added that the RFQ has also laid down more stringent norms for projects that will be taken into consideration, while calculating the experience score.  For the Udaipur-Ahmedabad NH project the capital cost of eligible projects should be Rs. 200 crore against the earlier level of Rs. 100 crore.  The new clause will limit the number of qualified firms that can bid for a particular project and in the process limit competition.  In view of these clauses, a number of firms which had qualified in the initial rounds of bidding of the NHAI projects, will not qualify for the same projects and the very reason the earlier RFQ was scrapped was because it called for short listing the top builders, thereby limiting competition but the new clause is indirectly limiting the competition, Director General NHBF, M Murali said.

NBMCW