Kuwait’s Partnerships Technical Bureau (PTB) has sent the request for proposal (RFP) for its Umm al-Hayman wastewater public-private partnership (PPP) project for approval from Kuwait’s Higher Committee. It will issue the RFP once approval has been granted.

“We are waiting for approval from the Higher Committee for Umm al-Hayman,” said Adel Alroumi, director-general at the PTB, speaking at MEED’s Kuwait Projects 2013 conference on 26 November. “Once we have approval, we will release the RFP.”

The Higher Committee was established under Kuwait’s PPP law of 2008, and is chaired by the finance minister. It is the committee responsible for studying and approving PPP projects.

The PTB, in partnership with the Public Works Minsitry, prequalified six groups to bid for the contract to build the Umm al-Hayman project in September 2012.

The Umm al-Hayman scheme will increase the capacity of the southern region of Kuwait for dealing with waste by 20 times compared with current capabilities. The plant will have an initial capacity of 500,000 cubic metres a day (cm/d), which is planned to be increased to 700,000 cm/d by 2020.

The six groups that have been prequalified are:

• Besix (Belgium/Orascom Construction Industries (Egypt)/Aqualia (Spain)
• Kharafi National (local)/ Sumitomo Corporation (Japan)
• Marbubeni Corporation (Japan)/Al-Ghanim & Sons (local)/K Water (South Korea)
• Mitsui (Japan)/GS Engineering & Construction (South Korea)/Ahmadiah (local)/Fouad Alghanim & Sons (local)
• Veolia Water (France)/Samsung Engineering (South Korea)/Itochu (Japan)/Al-Sager & Bros (local)/Degremont (France)
• WTE (Germany)