Prospective bidders from Europe and Asia were prominent among over 60 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) who took away tender documents for the R120bn rolling stock fleet renewal programme by the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) which has welcomed the response. According to Prasa CEO Lucky Montana, quoted by Business Day, “That is at least 70% of the manufacturers that participated in our earlier market engagements, which means that companies are showing real interest and paying attention to our programme.”
In evaluating bids that come in, Prasa intends to apply a 15% weighting to local content development and 85% to price competitiveness. This has been criticised by France’s Alstom, which is quoted by the paper saying: “It’s more expensive to build here than to import (the coaches), so it would be better if they had given a higher weighting to the economic development component, We think we shouldn’t be penalised twice because of the local content requirements and then still have to compete on price.”
PDF
