Jnpt Clears P & O Bid For Terminal

The Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, (JNPT), has cleared the P&O Australia Ports-led consortium bid to construct a two-berth container terminal at Nhava Sheva. The decision was taken at JNPTs board meeting yesterday.

The recommendation will now be forwarded to the ministry of surface transport, (MOST). The ministrys nod is necessary as the tender was floated before the announcement of the new guidelines for port privatisation which gave the ports trusts the authority to decide on the final bids.

The bid will also have to be cleared by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB). The other members of the consortium are DBC Port Management and Konsortium Perkapanan Berhad. The consortium partners will have to form a company.The P&O-led consortium pipped three other bidders as it quoted a higher net present value (NPV). The NPV was calculated on the basis of the discounted cash flow method.

 

P&0 Ports Australia has also emerged as the lone bidder for the construction of a port at Alewadi, Maharashtra.

Five consortia had bid for the project. One such was the Samsung CorporationPort of Singapore Authority-Celestar Investments-Neptune Orient Line-Samrat Shipping consortium. The second was ABG Heavy Industries-Bank of America-Hong Kong International terminals consortium. Marubeni Corporation Evergreen International -IL&FS consortium was the third. Larsen & Toubro- Stevdoring Services of America and Precious Shipping constituted the fourth consortium.

The L&T led consortiums financial bid was not opened on the grounds that it had conditions attached to it. Following this L&T moved the Bombay High Court, but the court upheld JNPTs contention. The tender had been floated on a build-operate and transfer (BOT) basis in December, 1995. Land will be leased out by the port trust while the operator would build the assets and levy a tariff for their use. The assets would revert to JNPT after 30 years. Industry experts place the cost of construction at Rs 700 crore.