India's booming technology capital of Bangalore invited global applications on Monday from consultants to help implement a more than $900 million metro railway project to cater to the city's growing population. State-run Bangalore Mass Rapid Transit Ltd (BMRTL), which advertised for the tender, said it was looking for a consultant for planning, design, project management, supervision, testing and commissioning of the project.
It said the first phase covering 33 km (20.6 miles) would include 26 km elevated and 7 km underground, and would cost 40 billion rupees ($918.7 million). It will take five years to build.
A BMRTL official told Reuters the total cost of the project, including land and other costs, would be 56 billion rupees.
Bangalore, a city of 6.5 million people, accounts for at least a third of India's $16 billion software and back-office service outsourcing industry, which employs more than 900,000 people.
Preliminary work including detailed design and formulation of land acquisition proposals have been completed,
BMRTL said on its Web site (http://www.bmrtl.com) it hoped to achieve financial closure by the end of May 2005 and construction was likely to begin in June/July 2005.
However, India's federal authorities are yet to approve the project being set up by the government of the southern state of Karnataka, whose capital city is Bangalore.
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