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Three international consultancy firms have opened price bids for a contract to provide transaction advisory services on the Bahrain Northern Link Road (BNLR), a highway the government intends to deliver on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis.

The Bahrain Tender Board opened the financial proposals on 6 August. Local units of KPMG, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Ernst & Young (EY) submitted bids, all of which were accepted.

PwC Bahrain submitted the lowest price at BD1.92m ($5.1m), followed by EY Consulting at BD2.26m ($6m) and KPMG Advisory at BD3.89m ($10.3m).

The selected adviser will provide financial, technical and legal advisory services, including feasibility studies, project structuring and bid documentation, along with support through tendering, evaluation and negotiation, and assistance up to financial close.

The 29.5-kilometre highway will run from North Manama Causeway Bridge to Suhaila Island and onwards to King Hamad Causeway. The project is intended to serve as a parallel east-west corridor to Sheikh Isa Bin Salman Highway and to support traffic flow between Khalifa Bin Salman Port and Saudi Arabia.

Causeway connection

The BNLR will connect to the planned King Hamad Causeway. Earlier project plans, drawn up in 2016, included an arterial road with six or eight lanes that could run alongside a light rail or rapid bus transit system.

In October 2019, King Fahd Causeway Authority appointed a consortium to provide transaction advisory services for King Hamad Causeway. The $8.9m consultancy agreement was signed with a consortium of Netherlands-headquartered KPMG, US-based Aecom and UK-based CMS. The plan was for the project to be funded by tolls, as with the existing King Fahd Causeway.

The King Fahd Causeway opened in 1986 and extends for 25km. The bridge cost an estimated $1.2bn to construct and serves about 45,000 vehicles a day on average, rising to about 60,000 at weekends. It has been undergoing an expansion to ease severe congestion during peak periods.