Rs 8,300 cr Mumbai Trans Harbour Link project to start soon

Finally, the 22-km Rs 8,300 crore (Rs 83 billion) Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) project that connects Sewri and Nhava port would take off soon.

The state-run Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) would issue request for qualification for the project which is quite crucial to decongest the city.

The project was bidded out for twice could not take off and later it caught in controversy between the ruling Congress and Nationalist Congress Party over the nodal agency for the project.

Congress wanted the MMRDA, which comes under direct control of the chief minister-led urban development department, to be the nodal agency while NCP insisted that the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation should be the implementing agency.

Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, at the India Economic Summit here on Monday, told Business Standard, "RFQ will be invited next week for MTHL project. The project, which was bidded twice, could not take off. However, the government is quite sure that the investors would participate during the proposed bidding process."

MTHL is one of the crucial transport infrastructure project being pursued by the state government to be declared as the national project by the central government so that it would get higher viability gap funding. The state government has undertaken infrastructure projects worth $60 billion in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

MMRDA official said that it was already in talks with the World Bank to get funding for the MTHL project.

The World Bank had earlier tied up with the MMRDA to fund the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP. In August, the MMRDA had appointed a consortium of Arup Consulting Engineers and KPMG to conduct a techno-economic feasibility study of the MTHL.