Indian contractor Simplex Infrastructures has submitted the low bid of RO116m ($300m) for the third phase package on the 265-kilometre Batinah Expressway in Oman.

Oman’s Transport & Communications Ministry received bids from 16 contractors on 9 May.

The Indian contractor’s bid was 6.8 per cent lower than the RO124.4m bid submitted by the joint-second lowest bidders, Turkey’s Makyol Gulf and the local Oman Roads Engineering Company. The local Khalid bin Ahmed & Sons submitted the marginally higher bid of RO124.5m. This was followed by the RO125m price submitted by Turkish contractor Sezai Turkes.

The third package will involve building a 43km stretch of the Batinah Expressway.

The ministry has also recently tendered the fourth and fifth packages for the road scheme. Interested companies have until 21 May to submit bids for the 50km fourth phase, and until 2 July to submit prices for the fifth phase.

The Batinah Expressway will extend from the current Muscat Expressway to Khamat Malaha, located on the Oman/UAE border. The road will run parallel to the existing Batinah highway.

In March, the local Galfar Engineering & Contracting was awarded an estimated OR138.9m contract by the Transport & Communications Ministry to build the first phase of the expressway scheme.

The expressway project has been allocated about RO250m ($650m) in the Sultanate’s eighth Five-Year Plan (2011-15), which was announced by the government in early 2011.