Int'l tender for Padma bridge next month likely

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Munima Sultana
The government is likely to float international tender for construction of the proposed Padma bridge in the second week of February as the donors have indicated the release of the pre-qualification (PQ) document soon, officials said.
They said the clearance of the PQ document which was sent to all lenders, including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), for approval two and a half months ago was halted as main lenders put some conditions, mainly over the bridge design and costs.
The Bangladesh Bridge Authority (BBA), the implementing agency of the project, sent the document separately to all lenders on October 27.
The officials said the donors, particularly JICA, raised objection to the bridge's structure. It suggested building of the bridge only for road purpose with concrete instead of steel-truss-composite to reduce the cost, the officials added.
"But the controversy over the bridge structure and cost has been removed after a meeting between the Ministry of Communication and JICA this week," said a senior official of the ministry.
He said Communication Minister Abul Hossain, who chaired the meeting, assured the JICA representatives of keeping provision for addendum in the PQ document subject to geological survey reports. The Japanese lender then assured the minister of releasing the PQ document soon.
Although the WB and the ADB agreed on the construction of two-tier bridge, the JICA has been rigid on its demand to build super structure and sub structure separately.
The Padma multipurpose bridge has been planned to be constructed with steel-truss composite keeping four lane road on the top and a broad-gauge railway track below with four kilometer approach roads at Mawa and 12 km in Madaripur.
Auckland-based Maunsell Aecom, the government appointed consultant of the Padma project, designed the bridge with 100 year longevity which the government's panel of experts approved in October.
The design has also tried to keep possible modern facilities including electric train tracks, improved safety requirements, railway approach bridge and tourism facilities in the design which led to increase the total cost from $ 1.8 billion to $ 2.4 billion.