Oman’s Transport and Communications Ministry has invited contractors to bid by 2 July for the contract to build the fifth phase of the 265-kilometre Batinah Expressway project.

The nine companies that have collected documents so far are:

• Mapa Construction (Turkey) with Gunal Construction (Turkey)
• Sezai Turkes (Turkey)
• Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) (Athens-based)
• Larsen & Toubro (India)
• National United Engineering & contracting Company (local)
• Makyol Gulf (Turkey)
• Strabag (Austria)
• Desert Line Projects (Local)
• Ozkar Insaat Sanayl Ve Ticaret (Turkey)

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

Contractors are preparing to submit bids by 7 May for the fourth phase of the expressway project. In early April, the local Oman Roads Engineering Company submitted the low bid of RO115.4m for a contract to build the second phase of the expressway. In March, the Transport and Communications Ministry recently awarded an estimated RO138.9m contract to the local Galfar Engineering & Contracting Company to build the first phase of the Batinah Expressway project.