Price negotiations for Thai government's water management projects kicked off

BANGKOK, June 11 (TNA) - The bid evaluation committee for the Thai government's 350-billion-baht water management and flood prevention plans is negotiating prices with bidding winners and will report negotiation results to the Cabinet on June 18, 2013. The committee convened representatives of Loxley-AGT, which earlier won the bidding contests for Module A6 and Module B4 projects, and Summit SUT Joint Venture, which won the contest for the Module B project for the price negotiations at Bangkok's Government House on Tuesday. The negotiations will continue until June 13 and the committee will report negotiation results to the Thai Cabinet, through the Water Management and Flood Prevention Commission on June 18. Tongthong Chandransu, Permanent Secretary for the Prime Minister's Office and Chairman of the bid evaluation committee, affirmed, meanwhile, that there was not bid rigging as many parties feared and some contenders even withdrew from the contests because they could not build projects under required prices. Tongthong said if the negotiations failed, his committee would discuss prices with runners-up and then other qualified contenders and if the price negotiations still failed, his committee would report it to the Water Management and Flood Prevention Commission for further decision. (TNA)