Bahrain’s Finance Ministry is reviewing plans to develop its next wastewater treatment plant at Tubli on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis. Instead, it may relaunch the project as an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) project.

According to sources close to the scheme, the ministry has been deterred from using the private sector to build its next wastewater project due to high bids offered by developers for the preceding wastewater project at Muharraq.

However, Muharraq sewage treatment project included significant deep-gravity work that increased the tariffs significantly. The Tubli project will not involve such work.

Further, the original project had been expected to include a private-sector developer taking on the ownership and rehabilitation of an existing plant at the site, but this idea has been dropped. Both aspects are expected to push the bid prices down.

The project will involve the development of a new-build, 200,000-cubic-metre-a-day (cm/d) sewage treatment plant, with 6 kilometres of associated sewer networks.

Muharraq sewage treatment plant is approaching financial close. The UK’s United Utilities and South Korea’s Samsung Engineering will build the project.