Malaysian firm offers to put project on track

Malaysian firm offers to put project on track
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Even as Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy assured Bangaloreans that only the best contemporary mass transit system would be introduced, a Malaysian consortium has come forward with a proposal to put the much-delayed Metrorail project on track. The proposal, if considered, would reduce the financial burden on the government.

“We will submit a fresh proposal to the new government in the next ten days,” Syed Saahil Saif, Managing Director of the Malaysian consortium Kencana Kasifa Transit Systems (KKTS), told this website's newspaper on Saturday.

The KKTS chief said the consortium would meet the CM and explain to him its proposal of taking up the project on private-public partnership. The consortium proposes to raise the entire loan portion with no government guarantees.

“The previous Karnataka government was going slow, while Hyderabad had called for global expression of interests. Now that the new government has come to power in Karnataka, we will submit a proposal to it,” he said.

The consortium has offered to take up the project on a build, own, operate, transfer (BOOT) basis where the Karnataka government will take an equity of 10 per cent of the total project cost.

“Let the Government give us the land and also decide the alignment, we will implement the project,” he said.

KKTS is willing to work with the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMRC) and has also offered to build either a driver-less system or a conventional system. The fare would be worked out with the BMRC.

The Malaysian delegation was in the City a few months back and had also submitted a proposal to former Chief Minister N Dharam Singh. However, the Congress-led coalition government had not responded to the KKTS offer.

Sources in the BMRC, however, said that it was too late for considering any such proposal for the existing project, as it was all set to get clearances from the Centre. Once this was done, work on the ground would begin soon.