Tender for construction of Desalination Facility

Interministerial Tenders Committee for Seawater Desalination Issues Tender for Construction of Desalination Facility
 
The Interministerial Tenders Committee for Seawater Desalination has issued a public BOT tender for the financing, building, operation, maintenance, and transfer to the State of a seawater desalination plant on the premises of the Orot Rabin power plant in Hadera. The facility is to produce 100 million cubic meters of water per year.
 
Contenders are first required to meet threshold conditions including experience in building, operating, and maintaining desalination facilities and to prove their financial solvency. Only those who meet these conditions will be invited by the Tenders Committee to take part in the next phase and to present bids.
 
The tender was issued after VID, Ltd., submitted the winning bid for the construction by late 2005 of a desalination plant in Ashkelon that will produce 100 million cubic meters of water per year, and after financial closure with the Via Maris group to build a desalination facility in the Palmahim area that will produce 30 million cubic meters per year.
 
This closure follows many delays in BOO tenders for the construction of four desalination plants. The delays ended after the Accountant General issued a clarification about the existence of signed contracts between the State and the developers and explained that developers would not be allowed to breach their contractual undertakings toward the State. The Accountant General implemented this policy by exercising the guarantee of the Carmel desalination group, prompting the developers of the other projects to honor their undertakings and to begin to perform the projects that they won.
 
The Tenders Committee is composed of representatives of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of National Infrastructures, the Ministry of the Environment, and the Water Commission, and is chaired by the Deputy Accountant General, CPA Zvi Halamish.
 
According to Halamish, the Interministerial Tenders Committee reflects the professional experience that has been accumulated in performing the various projects, including lowering threshold conditions that upset and impeded developers, allowing safeguards that make it possible to raise sources of finance abroad, etc.
 
The Accountant General, Dr. Yaron Zelikha, said that the issue of the tender marks another step in the Ministry’s policy of boosting infrastructure investments. He also noted the rapid progress that has been made in this field during the past year, including the issue of a tender for Highway 431, financial closure for the Jerusalem light-rail system and the desalination facility in Palmahim, issue of a prequalification tender for construction of an express lane at the entrance to Tel Aviv, issue of the tender for a private prison in Beersheva, etc.