This article is part of a daily series of MegaProjects articles. If you want to know more about PPP projects with a considerable size visit our MegaProjects section. You can receive them by email on a daily basis.

The Walloon Government has received initial bids for the Liège Tramway public private partnership (PPP) project in Belgium.

The Government launched the tender process last year and in October 2016 it selected three consortia:

• Mobiliège consortium, composed by Alstom Transport, BAM Group and pension fund PGGM.
• Tramardent, formed by CAF, Colas and DIF.
• Legiaexpress, made up Skoda, Vinci, CFE (where Vinci holds 47% of the capital) and the investment company Meridiam.

 Final bids for the project are expected in March 2018.

It was the second time that a tender for the project was launched. The Walloon Government re-launched the process after problems with treatment of the budget in the national accounts were raised by Eurostat. It was Eurostat's opinion that the investment for the project should go directly to government's balance sheet and in fact not to be split in several years during the life of the concession. 

Mobiliège was also selected in the first tender process in December 2014.

The project includes the construction of 12 km tramway between the Standard Liege Stadium and the northern district Coronmeuse, as well as the total renovation of the road network. This route could be extended to Jemeppe and / or Herstal, 18 km maximum in total, as part of a later contract. The project would be operated by a fleet of about 19 trams.

The PPP rail project will be developed on design, build, finance and maintenance (DBFM) basis. The concession contract will have a maintenance period of 27 years.

The total project investment is estimated at US$522 million.

The financial close of the project is slated to the end of 2018 and completion of the tram line is expected by 2020.