Big Firms Eye BEDB Project

Kuala Lumpur - Cahya Mata Sarawak Bhd, a conglomerate listed on the main board of Bursa Malaysia and the country's sixth largest construction company, is believed to have emerged as one of the leading candidates to bag a potential multi-billion dollar contract to help develop an industrial park in Brunei, Malaysia's Business Times reported quoting sources.

Cahya Mata, controlled by the family of Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, is believed to have handed in a detailed proposal to the Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB) in the middle of the year to act as a service provider for the country's Simgai Liang' Industrial Park (SIP).

Other Malaysian companies, which have made rival bids for the project, are MMC Corp Bhd, Sime Darby Bhd, Gamuda Bhd and Tenaga Nasional Bhd.

They are running against foreign companies such as Singapore's SembCorp Industries Ltd, South Korea's Samsung Corp and Leighton Holdings Ltd, Australia's biggest construction company.

The Sarawak-based company's close proximity and ties with Brunei give it an added advantage to secure some of the service provider contracts on offer, as the Sultanate has left the option open of appointing several service providers for specific industrial needs.

The core aim of the SIP is to attract as much as US$4.5 billion in foreign direct investment as well as to position the industrial park on the back of Brunei's gas reserves as the premier site for petrochemical and manufacturing industries in the Southeast Asian region.

Business Times was told that the total investment for the project could top $1.2 billion, and the Bruneian government is being advised by the Halcrow Group, a company based in London, with annual revenue in excess of $200 million a year.

It is firmly believed that BEDS will make an announcement on the matter within the next two months, while construction activities of the shared infrastructure and utilities could start as early as the fourth quarter of next year.

Among the scope of works which the service provider is to provide are shared infrastructure and utilities for the running of SIP, which include power, water and jetty services, and also the possibility of building a smelter plant.

Cahya Mata is one of the leading contenders to build a smelter in Sarawak, alongside Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al Bukhary's partly-owned GIIG Capital Sdn Bhd.

Last year, Cahya Mata together with two companies owned by the Chinese government, namely Shandong Luneng Group Ltd, one of the largest independent power producers in China, and State Grid Corp, China's largest state-owned enterprise, had submitted a bid to build and operate a smelter in Similajau at a cost of between $2.5 billion and $3.2 billion.

The plan was to tap the surplus power of the RM9 billion Bakun hydroelectric dam.

However, recent reports suggest that the Government is giving serious consideration to build an underground sea cable linking Sarawak to Peninsular Malaysia to take up the power generated by the dam.  -- Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

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