Kuwait’s Central Tenders Committee (CTC) has approved the award of a KD22.9m ($80.5m) contract to Germany’s Siemens to supply and install 400kV switch stations.

CTC approval is the final step before a formal contract award is made in the country. The client for the scheme is the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW). The project is one of the latest of several schemes that the MEW has tendered in 2013 as it seeks to expand and upgrade Kuwait’s power transmission and distribution networks.

In August, the CTC received bids for two deals to build a number of electrical substations in the Jaber al-Ahmad area.

For the first contract, the CTC received bids from five companies to build seven substations at Jaber al-Ahmad, including the Y5, Y6, Y7, Y8, Y9, Y10 and Y11 units. Saudi Arabia’s National Contracting Company (NCC) submitted the lowest price of KD23.1m. This was marginally lower than the KD23.14m bid submitted by the local Al-Ahlia. The local office of India’s Larsen & Toubro submitted the third-lowest price of KD24.3m.

The local firms Kharafi National and Asil House Group for General Trading and Contracting submitted bids of KD24.9m and KD34.5m respectively.

Four companies submitted prices for the second contract, which also involves building seven substations. These are the 1X, 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X, 6X and 7X substations. The local office of Larsen & Toubro submitted the low bid of KD22.9m, which was 1.3 per cent lower than the KD23.2m price submitted by Al-Ahlia. Kharafi National and Switzerland’s ABB completed the bidding with prices of KD23.8m and KD30m respectively.