The uncertain political climate of the country has kept away international companies from participating in bidding process for a 100 million dollars dredging project at Port Qasim (PQ), sources said on Friday. The Port Qasim Authority (PQA) is planning to conduct capital dredging to achieve an all-weather 14-metre draught in the 45-km long navigational channel of PQ by 2010.
The project would be undertaken on ''Design, Construct and Finance'' basis and has been estimated to cost $100 million. The PQA had earlier pre-qualified five international dredging firms for its bidding process. The pre-qualified companies included Boskalis, Van Oord, Jan De Nul, Dredging International (DI) and China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC).
However, only two firms--China Harbour Engineering Company and Dredging International from Belgium--participated in the bid opening held here at PQA on Friday, sources told Business Recorder.
They said that China Harbour Engineering Company apparently submitted the lowest bid of Rs 10.2 billion, and DI of Rs 10.7 billion. Sources said that the other three firms were perhaps restrained by the fast changing political scenario in the country.
"As it is a ''Design-Construct-Finance'' based project, they might have been deterred by financial factor," sources said, adding that "political settlements may put negotiations with banks for settlement on financial terms and conditions in an unforeseen delay."
Other factors likely to be responsible for the investors'' restraint could be the very large size of the contract itself. "The contractor would be required to design the project and more importantly would need state-of-the-art dredgers and with the right numbers to do justice with this extensive and tough job," they said.
They said port operators across the world were busy in extensive dredging work, which had created a persistent demand for dredgers and left many dredging companies short of dredging equipment. "Non-availability of dredgers coupled with major engagement of the firms at various international ports may compel them to keep away," they opined.
When asked if the CHEC was likely to win the contract sources replied that "it would be premature to say so at this stage and PQA would declare it after a complex evaluation process."
They said the PQA''s consultant, Engineering Consultant Int Ltd (ECIL) would examine all aspects of the submitted statements and conduct a comparative study of the same. "The PQA would have to see if any of the bidders had set any conditions which may not be acceptable to the Authority," they said.
Sources said that the PQA is likely to announce awarding of the contract within next 30 days. The Authority was scheduled to hold the bid opening ceremony last month (on January 31, 2008) but due to changing political scenario in the crisis-hit Pakistan the bidders requested PQA to announce a minimum of one month''s extension which was granted.