Saudi Arabia’s National Centre for Privatisation (NCP) has yet to award the advisory contracts for the planned public transport public-private partnership (PPP) projects in Mecca, Jeddah, Medina and Dammam, according to sources familiar with the scheme.

NCP initially planned to award the contracts a month after it received bids for the schemes’ technical, legal and financial advisory roles in October last year.

The agency also said last year that it plans to hire three other consultants for commercial, environmental and insurance advisory roles.

MEED understands the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MOEP), the government ministry overseeing NCP, commissioned a study in 2016 to review the planned public transport systems across the four cities.

Prior to this, the schemes were developed independently by each municipal transport authority.

Of the four public transport schemes, the metro component of the Mecca Public Transport Programme was at the most advanced procurement stage in 2015, when the Finance Ministry ordered a review of all major projects in the kingdom and put on hold the award for $8bn-worth of civil works, rolling stock and systems contracts for the metro’s lines B and C

The Mecca Metro was initially planned as a PPP with UK-based consultancy EY and law firm Ashurst and the US’ Parsons Brinckerhoff appointed as transaction advisers for the project in March 2011. A feasibility study for the metro was prepared by a joint venture of France’s Systra and the US-based Aecom, which was appointed as the consultant in April 2012. However, the plans to develop the Mecca Metro on a PPP basis were dropped after the government decided to fund the scheme directly in 2013.

The privatisation of the kingdom’s mainline rail networks is also under way. The Public Transport Authority (PTA) expects to tender the consultancy packages for four mainline rail and logistics schemes with an estimated total budget of $20bn, by mid-2018.