Ethiopian Railway Corporation (ERC) postponed the tender it had announced to hire a contractor for Semera -Tadjourah, railway project for the fifth time. The recent submission date was meant to take place by this week on January 30, 2015, but according to a letter sent to the bidders on January 15, 2014, the ERC stated that the bid document submission date is again extended to March 3, 2015.
The tender was postponed for two reasons, says Getachew Betru (PhD), chief executive officer (CEO)of ERC.
“One is because of requests from the bidders for more time to prepare financial and technical proposal. The second reason is that we needed to provide some explanations to some bidders who were not clear about some points in the bid document.’’
The project is part of the national project that extends form Mekele – Weldya/Hara Gebeya – Semera-Tadjourah Port Railway Project. But the 268.2Km Mekele-Woldiya/Hara Gebeya Railway project was awarded to the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) for 1.6 billion dollars in 2012 after obtaining the financing from (EX-IM) Bank of China. The project is expected to take three and half years to complete.
The ERC is undertaking the construction of railways in two schemes – Light Railway Transit (LRT) and National Railway Network of Ethiopia (NRNE). The LRT project which has a 31Km length was awarded to China Railway Engineering Corporation (CREC) with 475 million dollars in 2011. The project is expected to start operation by May 2015. For the NRNE, the ERC has identified eight railway corridors for study, design and subsequent implementation, the total estimated length of which is 5,060km.
Semera to Tadjourah rail project is part of the national project that was planned to be constructed as phase one.
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