DHAKA, June 3 (Xinhua) -- A 49.30 billion-taka (about 586.91 million U.S. dollars) deal for the last package of Bangladesh's first-ever metro rail project was signed in capital Dhaka on Sunday.
Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited (DMTCL), a Bangladeshi state-owned enterprise founded to implement the metro rail lines across the Dhaka city, signed the deal for Electrical and Mechanical Systems with Marubeni of Japan and Larsen&Toubro (L&T) Limited of India.
The DMTCL is constructing a 20.1-km metro rail, known as Mass Rapid Transit Line-6 (MRT 6), dividing works into eight packages.
In May last year, DMTCL signed three separate contract packages (CPs) including CP-2, CP-3 and CP-4 worth over 58.26 billion taka (about 719 million U.S. dollars) with Italian-Thai Development Public Company Limited, a Thailand-based construction firm, and Chinese state-owned Sinohydro Corporation Limited.
Bangladesh in February 2013 signed a loan deal with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to finance the 20.1-km metro rail service project scheduled to be implemented in three phases.
Of the total cost of 220 billion taka, JICA, a governmental agency of Japan which is responsible for the technical cooperation of its official development assistance programs, will provide about 165 billion taka, while the Bangladesh government will provide the rest.
In the first phase, 11 km would be completed by 2019 and 4.4 km by 2020. The remaining 4.7 km was expected to be completed by 2022.
An official had earlier said the overhead construction of metro rail can help the Bangladeshi government's efforts to ease traffic gridlock in Dhaka which has only 436 km of 4-lane roads and 1,408 km of 2-lane roads.
Once the project is implemented, a train with six air-conditioned spacious coaches will operate every four minute and will carry some 60,000 passengers each hour. (1 U.S. dollar equals to about 84 taka)
