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Daewoo clinches 863 million-dollar deal in Mumbai

Posted November. 21, 2017 07:31,   

Updated November. 21, 2017 08:32

한국어

South Korean construction company Daewoo Engineering & Construction has partially won a construction project to build the longest ocean bridge in India. Experts say the latest deal will add momentum to the company’s ongoing disposal process, on the strength of the series of overseas orders it recently won.

Daewoo Engineering & Construction announced on Monday that its consortium with Tata Project Limited (TPL), a subsidiary of India’s Tata Group, struck a deal for Package 2 of the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link project from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) for 863 million U.S. dollars. In conjunction with TPL, Daewoo E&C will carry out the design, purchasing and construction, taking a 60 percent stake worth 618 million dollars.

The project ordered from the MMRDA is aimed at building a sea link connecting Mumbai and its satellite city Navi Mumbai. Spanning 21.8 kilometers long, the structure will become the longest sea link in India once completed. The total construction cost of the Mumbai sea link hovers around 2.2 billion dollars.

Industry experts attributed Daewoo E&C’s successful bidding to its rich experiences in bridge construction projects at home and abroad. As much facilitating was the company’s formulation of a consortium with India’s Tata Group. Daewoo E&C made inroads into the Indian market in 1995 for a construction project of a car factory. In 2016, the Korean constructor won a construction order to build a bridge in the Ganges of the State of Bihar, coming back to the Indian market for the first time in 16 years.

In August this year, Daewoo won Package 1 among the three packages of the Duqm Refinery project (worth a total 2.75 billion dollars) in Oman, forming a joint venture with Tecnicas Reunidas, a Spanish engineering procurement construction company. As the company has won a series of major overseas orders lately, experts project that its ongoing sell-off process will make further progress. A preliminary bidding was made on last Monday, and the preferred bidders will be selected early next year after the official bidding in December.

The Mumbai deal will be welcome news for other construction companies in South Korea. With the orders from the oil producing countries in the Middle East weakening, the overseas orders of the local constructors have failed to reach their expectations this year. In terms of prices, South Korean constructors also pale in comparison with Chinese or European competitors.

According to the International Contractors Association of Korea, as of Monday the volume of South Korea’s overseas construction orders stands at 22.8 billion dollars, down 2 percent from last year’s 23.3 billion dollars.



Ae-Jin Ju jaj@donga.com