Oman’s Transport and Communications Ministry has invited contractors to submit bids for the contract to build the fourth phase on its 265-kilometre-long Batinah Expressway project.

Interested parties have until 16 April to submit bids for the contract, which will involve the construction of a 50 kilometre section of the highway. 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.

The ministry received bids from 17 contractors for the 43km-long third package on the expressway project on 6 February.

The bidders for the third package are:

• Strabag (Austria)
• Nagarjuna Construction Company (India)
• Galfar Engineering & Contracting (local)
• Larsen & Toubro (India)
• Sezai Turkes (Turkey)
• Consolidated Contractors Company (Athens)
• National united Engineering & contracting Company (local)
• Makyol Gulf (Turkey)
• Mapa Construction (Turkey) with Gunal Construction (Turkey)
• Al-Naboodah Contracting Company (UAE)
• Sarooj Construction Company (Oman)
• Oman Roads Engineering Company (local)
• Al Nadha al-Omaniah (local)
• Khalid bin Ahmed & Sons (local)
• Simplex Infrastructures (India)
• Al-Shanfri Trading Company (local)
• Oman United Engineering Services (local)

In November last year, the ministry received bids for the main construction contract on the second phase on the road project, which covers the section of road from Naseem Garden to Suwaiq. In October, contractors submitted bids for the first package on the project. Contractors are still waiting for both of the initial packages to be awarded.

The expressway project has been allocated about RO250m ($649m) as part of the sultanate’s eighth five-year plan (2011-15). In 2011, transport projects accounted for 66 per cent of the $2.4bn-worth of construction and infrastructure contracts awarded in the sultanate.