Despite two extensions granted by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) to the bidders vying for a construction contract, none of the 14 leading consortia put in the bids because of the unstable economic situation. Earlier, the state government rejected the Build-Operate-Transfer model and opted for a cash contract. “We tried the BOT model which did not give adequate results then. Unfortunately, there was no response for the cash contract model also. We will now have to sit together and explore possibilities of what alternate models could be adopted to implement the project,” said Ratnakar Gaikwad, Metropolitan Commissioner of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, which is funding the project.

According to sources, the reason why the companies did not bid for the cash contract of the sea bridge was that the interested consortiums demanded that 40 per cent of the transactions should be carried out in foreign exchange, a proposal that was not acceptable to the MSRDC.

Some weeks back the MMRDA did not receive any response from seven consortia in the fray to win the contract to construct the Charkop-Bandra-Mankhurd metro rail corridor. According to Gaikwad, the current market situation is such that it may take time for the authorities to come up with a suitable model to attract adequate response from interested parties. “We’d examine alternate models, but the current market situation needs to change, perhaps it’ll take time for a new model to evolve as BOT and government-owned models have not worked out,” Gaikwad added.