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The Bogotá Metro Company (EMB) has announced that it has begun negotiating financing for the Line 1 PPP project with the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). 

The state-owned company is hoping to secure US$600 million from both financiers for the design, financing, construction, procurement, testing, commissioning, operation and maintenance of the first line of the Bogotá Metro.

The line will travel 24km through the city, the capital of Colombia, located in the centre of the country. Trains will run every three minutes, stopping at 16 stations and handling 72,000 passengers a day.

The planned route goes from Portal de las Américas, the terminal station of the TransMilenio mass-transit system, located in the south-west of the city, to 72nd Street via Caracas Avenue. 10 of the stations will interchange with the TransMilenio.

The project is currently in tender. Earlier this month, Colombia's national development bank, FDN (Financiera de Desarrollo Nacional), disclosed that the Request for Expressions of Interest issued in April elicited 64 responses. EMB has disclosed that it will not open the next phase of the tender process until securing this financing. 

The negotiations cover the particular conditions of the loans, such as disbursements, interest rates and terms. Once these are agreed upon, the financing will be submitted for approval to the Boards of the banks. EMB expects the loans to be approved in July.

EMB also plans to secure financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB), with negotiations scheduled to begin in June.

The total investment required for the project has not yet been disclosed, though estimations have been made, ranging from US$3.6 billion to US$5 billion.

FND and EMB aim to award the contract between May and June 2019. The line is scheduled to begin operations in 2024. It will be the first of a planned metro network. EMB projects that by 2030, 80% of Bogotá's residents will live less than a kilometer away from a mass transit line, metro line or main line.