Railways to award PPP projects worth Rs. 57,000cr

New Delhi : Indian Railways is currently getting set to award PPP infrastructure projects involving an investment worth Rs. 57,000cr of which projects entailing an investment of Rs. 8,000cr pertained to laying new lines and Rs. 6,500cr projects are available for building metro rail network, Managing Director, Bharuch Dahej Rail company, said adding that Indian Railways still has infra capacity deficit and that could be tackled by adopting PPP module only.

Going ahead he further revealed that in totality Indian Railways currently has a total number of 122 projects on shelf, besides 50 projects pertained to gauge conversion related works. In the current Railways budget the ministry has indicated that it would be raising Rs. 1,776cr for completing 85 railways infra projects by adopting PPP routes and has already sharpened its focus on this score because rail-based transport has the least carbon footprint as compared to land-based modes and the department needs to have flexible approach in this regard. The South Central Railways zone has targeted to handle over 100 million tons of freight during the current financial year with coal accounts for about 50 percent of the throughput.