PMRC selects DMRC as General Consultant for Patna Metro Rail project

Patna (Urban Transport News): In the third meeting of board of Directors of Patna Metro Rail Corporation (PMRC) on Wednesday, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has been selected as General Consultant to implement the metro rail project in the city. The Japanese financial agency, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will fund 60% of the total cost of Patna metro rail project as an ODA loan. The meeting was chaired by state urban development and housing department principal secretary and the Managing Director of PMRC Chaitanya Prasad. He said that the project is likely to start rolling on the ground within three months.

MoU with DMRC

He said that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has been zeroed in for the project and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) will be signed for its execution soon after getting the state cabinet approval. Interacting with the TOI, he said that several changes were likely to be made in the alignment of the two corridors under the metro project. He said that after getting state cabinet’s nod, an Memorandum of Undertaking (MOU) will be signed with DMRC, which will then begin the bidding process for construction works. The execution of the project will become visible on the ground in three months.

DMRC has been zeroed in for Patna metro project as it has already done metro works in Noida, Greater Noida and two lines of Mumbai metro. It has provided interim consultancy to many other such projects. DMRC will carry out all the works related to construction, maintenance and repair of the upcoming metro rail in the state capital.

Consultancy charges

As General consultant for Patna metro rail project, the DMRC will get a total consultancy charge around Rs 511.88 crore. The consultancy charge finalised at 5% of the project cost for the first corridor and 6% for the second corridor. The first corridor will cover a distance of 16.94 km-long whereas the corridor will cover 4.45 km-long stretch. Chaitanya said,

We will be paying less than what others have paid to DMRC for executing metro projects in other cities. It will also do the capacity building of our team and will provide us legal support for next five years.

He further said that initially, PMRC will paid Rs 25 crore to DMRC for mobilization of resources for the project and payments will be made for three months each thereafter.

Reduction in staff strengths

He informed that PMRC will reduce its expected strength of staff from 151 to 30. Since DMRC will be doing all the works, PMRC will hire around 30 people only for quality control, land acquisition and few other works. However, Earlier PMRC had sanctioned the strength of 151 employees.

Project funding

Talking about the project finding, Chaitanya said that JICA will extends loan 60% of the project cost for 40 years on 0.2% interest rate.It will also give 12 years grace period after which repayment has to be made. And the remaining 40% will be contributed by Central government and State Government equally.