Engineering and infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) emerged as the lowest bidder for the Rs. 12,132 crore Hyderabad Metro project.
According to State government sources, L&T quoted the lowest viability gap funding (VGF) and surpassed other bidders like Reliance. Viability gap funding means the government extending financial support to a project for making it an economically viable entity.
L&T came forward to take up the work for about Rs. 1,850 crore as viability gap funding as against the sanctioned Rs. 4,853 crore. The State is yet to name the bidder officially.
The Hyderabad Metro Rail project, which was initially bagged by Maytas Infra of B. Ramlinga Raju, the disgraced former chairman of Satyam Computers, ran into rough weather after Raju admitted to multi-crore fraud in his IT firm.
As Maytas failed to achieve financial closure after the Satyam scandal broke out, the government had invited fresh bids in July 2009. Maytas even lost its Rs. 71 crore security deposit for the contract.
The consortia which were prequalified were L&T, Lanco-OHL (Spain), Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, Essar-Leighton (Australia), Gayatri Constructions, VNR Consortium, GVK-Samsung, GMR, Transstroy-OJSC Russia, CR 18 of China and BEML Consortium and Soma-Strabag.
