An advisory consultant for Bahrain’s first metro project will be appointed later this year.

The Bahrain Metro Network, costing between $1 billion and $2 billion, will cover 109 km, with electric driverless trains capable of carrying 43,000 passengers per hour from more than 20 stations spread across the country. It is expected to be operational by 2023.

Bahrain’s Transportation and Telecommunications Minister Kamal Ahmed said that a comprehensive study on the project has been completed following which a transaction adviser will be appointed to draw up invites for developers.

“(The study has) identified the need and what the network should be like, along with the routes of the network, the phase-wise development and the cost,” he said. “This has been submitted to the ministerial segment for approval to move to the next phase, which is to appoint a construction adviser that will be a consortium of legal, technical and financial entities.

“We will receive the bids by June and by September a transaction adviser will be appointed. They will do the pre-qualification for the developer and also review the financial business case and develop the invite for developers.”

Ahmed was speaking at the sixth edition of C5 Accelerate’s Policy Hack Series called Fire Side Chat last month.

The nationwide metro network is part of Bahrain’s section of a pan-Gulf railway. The GCC Railway, which is on track to be operational by the end of 2023, will connect a cargo station in the Khalifa Bin Salman Port in Hidd and a passenger terminal in Salmabad to a train station in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.