Business

Wednesday December 5, 2007

Japanese firms qualified to bid



KUALA LUMPUR: Four Japanese companies qualified to bid for the construction of the tunnel package in the Pahang-Selangor water transfer project.

Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik said initially, eight companies - four Japanese and four Chinese - were pre-qualified for the tender, but the Japanese got through.

“The selection was made by the consultants in the ministry, with the help of Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and the Finance Minister,” he told reporters after signing of a memorandum of understanding between Tune Talk Sdn Bhd and Celcom (M) Sdn Bhd yesterday.

He said the selection was “unbiased” and had nothing to do with JBIC as the project’s consultants but based on technical, economic, experience and financial aspects.

“The selection process was long because everything has to be agreed upon by JBIC and the Finance Ministry as well as the project consultants and the ministry's German consultant group,” said Lim.

He noted the main reason for the international tender was to “bring the cost down” to RM3bil from RM3.8bil, as the size of the tunnels would depend on the design proposed by the companies.

According to Lim, local contractors will stand a chance to bid for other three packages - the dam, pump house and twin pipe channels.

Meanwhile, Lim said the mobile telecommunications industry had a lot of potential in the country, and he believed that convergence of technologies in the communications and multimedia industry would eventually push the convergence of services.

“There is no shortage of business models for data with emphasis on mobile transactions such as mobile Internet, mobile banking, mobile payment systems, mobile stock broking, shopping, news and entertainment.

“In this convergence era, competition becomes more complex and is no longer an issue between one telco and another but across businesses and sometimes across countries,” he said.

Tune Talk, incorporated earlier this year, is partnering Celcom to set up a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) to provide value-added services and content exclusive to Celcom that would be operational by the end of the first quarter next year.

Tune Talk CEO Jason Lo said leveraging on the services provided by sister companies Tune Money and Tune Hotels, Tune Talk was poised “to offer an incredible array of value-added services to customers.”

He said the partnership with Celcom “will give Tune Talk the reach it needs to make it the most successful (MVNO) in Malaysia and beyond.”

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