PANAJI
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, in whose tenure as Union Defence Minister the Goa Shipyard Ltd had bagged a contract to manufacture minesweepers, has said that reports which indicated that the project is scrapped are wrong.
"Please read properly. What is cancelled is consultant's role. A particular consultant's tender was not as per the rules and regulations, so they are re-floating it. What is big in that?" Parrikar asked when journalists questioned him about the deal.
"I believe in transparency. The exercise carried out by Goa Shipyard could not be completed because of certain terms and conditions by the Korean company which are beyond the scope of the tender. So what do you expect? There has to be re-tendering. So they have ordered re-tendering. Now, this has nothing to do with the order...," Parrikar said.
He said that the technology is currently unavailable in India and hence Goa Shipyard Ltd would need a foreign collaborator to come on board.
"To build MCMV, minesweepers as they call it, requires different technology. The boats are built of fiberglass, non-metallic substance and these are huge weighing 1000 and 1200 tonnes. So you cannot build them with anything other than fiberglass or wood. Plus there are technologies by which you have to identify mines... India does not have that technology. If you need to manufacture these in India, there is a foreign collaborator required," Parrikar said.
"So what is cancelled is the process of selecting the collaborator, not the order. The consultant's tender is being re-floated. Not the order of Goa Shipyard. We need those minesweepers urgently. So it is to be done very fast and new consultancy selection has to be done," Parrikar said.
When asked whether the consequent delay would hamper the country's progress, Parrikar said that for a project of this length, a delay of one year was not very big.
"These are projects of eight years and ten years duration. So these can absorb the delay. A six-month delay can be absorbed. In an 8-10 year contract or a 12-year contract, you can absorb one year delay. Percentage wise it is not very big," Parrikar said.
Earlier, Chairman and Managing Director of Goa Shipyard, Rear Admiral Shekhar Mittal, reaffirmed that GSL will be manufacturing minesweepers. However, he said that the company will have to issue a new Expression of Interest (EoI) and a float a fresh Request for Proposal (RFP) for the same.
Minesweepers are naval warships designed and manufactured to disable naval mines. They are extremely crucial for India's defence and hence the importance of Goa Shipyard's minesweeper order can be gauged from that.
Three years ago, Goa Shipyard had floated an RFP for minesweepers contract. The lowest bidder then was a South Korean company called Kangnam. Kangnam was expected to transfer technology to Goa Shipyard using which the shipyard would have manufactured minesweepers.
But, sources revealed that Kangnam wanted certain commercial deviations from the original RFP, however, the Ministry of Defence has not agreed to it. The Ministry of Defence has told Goa Shipyard to re-issue EoI and float a fresh RFP for minesweeper contract. A number of international shipyards including Kangnam and Intermarine from Italy are in the fray for winning the contract to transfer the technology to Goa Shipyard for the manufacture of minesweepers.
This high profile minesweeper order worth Rs 32,400 crore was awarded to Goa Shipyard by Defence Ministry when Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, was Union Defence Minister. The contract is expected to give fillip to Goa's economy as well because Goa Shipyard will collaborate with other local shipyards for the manufacture of several parts of minesweepers.
Meanwhile, more than 100 students are being trained in ITIs in Goa for FRP (fiber reinforced plastic) skills to equip them to work at GSL for its minesweeper order.
Therefore, successful execution of minesweeper order is not only crucial for GSL, but also for the state.
