The Ta Qali Crafts Village tender closed on 28 February.

The tenders were opened on Friday and the eight submissions presented qualified and will be considered on their administrative and technical submissions.

This part of the adjudication will commence in the coming days.

The next part of evaluation dealing with the financial aspect will then come into play and the results will be published soon after. This should be around the end of April.

By the time the contracts are signed, mobilisation should start around the last week of August. The work is expected to take up to four years. This is longer than usual due to the migration process that will take place to keep all businesses in the area fully functional.

The funding for this project will mainly sourced from government coffers.

In the meantime, the tender for the roads and public areas is due on 11 March.

Again this should take up the same time as the main tender, so mobilisation on this one should take place in September.

Time line for this tender is four years and should be in tune with the main tender for the construction of units.

Funding for this will be from EU sources.

All the above dates are valid, if everything goes as planned, that is, no appeals are lodged that have to be dealt with, which would postpone everything of course. Another tender for project management is in the pipeline.