Tender process for Myanmar's railway station expansion project in progress

The tender process for Myanmar's Yangon Central Railway Station expansion project is in progress with three developers having formally submitted the tender proposal to the Myanmar railways authorities recently to compete for the station's comprehensive development project.

The three unidentified developers are from nine domestic and foreign companies selected in October last year for implementing the project.

The Myanmar railways authorities invited expression of interest for the project earlier in the year and out of 28 short-listed companies, the nine were selected.

These companies are those from Myanmar, Japan, Vietnam, China, Singapore, Canada and China's Taiwan. Of them, some are multi- national joint ventures.

The Yangon Central Railway Station comprehensive development project, which covers 25.11 hectares of land, called for an investment of 2 billion to 2.5 billion U.S. dollars.

The project, which includes design-and-build work and is prioritized as in the form of joint venture with private enterprises, is expected to start late in February or March.

According to the Myanma Railways, the resettlement action plan and the conceptual plan have already been drawn and the first phase of the project deals with resettlement of railways staff families living in the railways quarters and relocation of factories of the railways in the project area.

Under a plan of massive transformation of the railway station into one of the city's most sparkling new projects, the Myanmar authorities were inviting ideas and expression of interest from local and international investors to undertake design-and-build work for the comprehensive development of the 130-year-old railway station in accordance with international rules and regulations.

In wake of paying around 40-45 billion Kyats ( 41 to 46 million U.S. dollars) annually in subsidy to the Myanmar Railways, the government called for developing the colonial-era-left station as a rail concerned business including high-rise buildings and hotels in accordance with international rules and regulations to enable reduction of the annual subsidy.

Meanwhile, the rail transport authorities have planned privatization of Yangon city circular train as part of its efforts to effectively run the rail transport business under the build, operate and transfer (BOT) system.

With about 130,000 passengers depending on rail transport in Yangon daily, the city circular trains are running about 200 rounds a day.

In 2013, the East Japan Railway Company offered to help promote the development of Myanmar's railway management and transport by sharing technical knowledge with the state enterprise. Enditem