A Turkish company has made the lowest bid for the design of a project to construct a rail line in Kuwait as part of the planned multi-billion-dollar rail network linking all Gulf oil producers, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The bid by Proyapi Engineering and Consulting Company is by far lower than the other bids offered by three other companies from China, Spain and Turkey, the Arabic language daily Al-Qabas said, quoting informed sources in the emirate.

Proyapi’s bid has a value of 2.47 million Kuwaiti dinars ($8.15 million) while China Railway Company made a bid of KWD6.77 million ($22.34 million), the report said.

Two other bids offered by Spain’s SENER and Systra Turkey were valued at about KWD8.82 million ($29.1 million) and KWD9.73 million ($32.1 million).

According to the paper, the bids have been opened by the Central Agency for Public Tenders and that the winning contractor will be picked by the Public Authority for Roads and Land Transport, which is supervising the project.

“The designs and consultancy studies for the project will be completed within 12 months, after which the tenders for the main project will be issued,” the paper said, adding that the Kuwaiti rail part is scheduled to be finished in late 2030.

Nine companies have competed for the project designs but five have been excluded by the Authority, according to the report.

The GCC rail, which will cost more than $20 billion, will start from Kuwait and pass through Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE Oman.

(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)

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