Bolivia awards consultancy for Montero-Bulo Bulo railway project

Bolivia's public works, services and housing ministry has awarded the consultancy tender for the supervision of the construction of the Montero-Bulo Bulo railway to the AccionaIngeniería-CPM consortium.

Acciona Ingeniería-CPM beat out 11 other firms by bidding 73.9mn bolivianos (US$10.7mn) for the consultancy, below the referential budget of 87mn bolivianos.

The technical supervision contract includes creating the final engineering design of the project, ensuring that the design meets international standards and is consistent across all three stretches of the project, creating a construction schedule and overseeing the works and maintaining the railway for three years upon completion.

The railway will connect Montero in Santa Cruz department with Bulo Bulo in Cochabamba. The tender was awarded to Chinese firms CAMC and China Railway as well as Spain's Yapilo, with CAMC constructing a 93km stretch connecting Montero with Santa Rosa and Río Yapacani for US$105mn, China Railway constructing a second stretch connecting Río Yapacani with Bulo Bulo for US$83.6mn and Yapilo constructing the three bridges, with a budget of US$47mn.

The project is part of a bigger effort to create a Peru-Bolivia-Brazil inter-oceanic railway and is expected to allow Bolivian state oil and petrochemical firm YPFB to ship an estimated 2,100t of urea and 1,200t of ammonia annually to neighboring nations.