Work reinitiated on Hyderabad Sukkur Motorway

The National Highway Authority (NHA) has decided to reinitiate work on the long overdue Hyderabad Sukkur Motorway (M-6) project. In this regard an agreement for consultancy services has also been awarded for “detailed design, traffic studies, commercial feasibility study and bid evaluation/bid comparative analysis”
The consultancy services will be provided by M/s Nespak (Pvt) Ltd., in joint venture with M/s ZAK Consulting Engineers (Pvt) Ltd, in association with Sub-Consultants namely M/s KPMG Taseer Hadi & Co and M/s Axis Law Chambers-the highest ranked Consultants in the Combined (technical and financial) evaluation, at the evaluated cost of Rs 61.177 million.
It is expected that due to the recent devaluation of rupee the project cost will be inflated by about Rs 25 Billion taking the total cost from Rs 175 billion to over Rs 200 billion.
Although the project in the previous government had been awarded to the China State Construction Engineering Corporation, with scheduled completion in three years, on build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis but on formation of the new government the project had been shelved due to financial constraints. Now NHA Executive Board has directed that a model be prepared without any element of government financing. According to the previous model, a certain portion of the project was to be funded through loan procured by the government of Pakistan.
All the segments of Peshawar-Karachi Motorway (PKM) have either been completed or awarded for construction except Hyderabad-Sukkur Motorway. According to the previous model, the 296km project would be a 6-lane motorway with design speed of 120 km/h, having 70 bridges, 15 interchanges and 243 underpasses.