The government on Wednesday said that meeting the deadline to award 12,000 km highway projects by March 2010 will be delayed by at least three more months. Road, transport and highways minister Kamal Nath said this singling out conflict of interest (crossholding in bid competitors) and other irritants in the concession agreement and bid documents as the reasons behind the slowdown. Join discussion...

North Yorkshire and City of York councils have become the latest local authorities to admit that the economic downturn has contributed to a delay in the procurement of their PFI waste contract. The councils, which received £65 million in PFI funds to jointly procure waste treatment infrastructure more than two years ago (see letsrecycle.com story), had hoped to invite final tenders from the two remaining bidders for the 25-year deal in December 2008 Join discussion...

Delays to the eventual signing of Greater Manchester’s Waste Disposal Authority’s (GMWDA) £3.8bn 25-year private finance initiative deal (PFI) cost its ten member councils an extra £441,000 in advisory fees last year, according to the authority’s latest set of accounts. GMWDA blamed the charge on a “delay in reaching the final close” for the PFI deal, Join discussion...

Though seven bidders had qualified for the second phase of the Mumbai Metro last year, none of them submitted financial bids for the project till the last date on Friday. The Government will now have to restart the bidding process, resulting in a delay of another four months. Join discussion...