The Railways' plan to set up dedicated eastern rail freight corridor between Delhi and Kolkata is likely to hit a roadblock as the Japanese government may not extend Rs 11,000 crore soft loan. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has raised doubts about the economic viability of the project.
It is however, funding, Rs 16,000 crore Western Corridor (Delhi-Mumbai) project. The funding is likely to be through the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) in the form of an aid or a soft loan. The Japanese government will also provide some amount of technical support to the project.
The sources in the Rail Bhawan said that the cost of eastern corridor has escalated due to rise in land acquisition costs across the corridors.
"It would require us to do some under provisioning for making the project financially viable," a source said. Interest during construction under a bank loan includes the interest plus the commitment charge on loans from ordinary capital resources. About 500 km of the corridors will be built on a completely new alignment, for which the railways would have to acquire land.
Sources in the railways said that as per JICA's estimates there has been a provision of 432 locomotives for the corridors with some varieties of electric locomotive costing upto Rs 53 crore each.
The cabinet committee on economic affairs had last month approved the dedicated freight corridor project for Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata.
These corridors would stamp out congestion from the existing railway lines which can then be only used for passenger trains. The Railways have also set up a separate company called Dedicated Rail Freight Corridor Corporation of India to undertake the project.
According to sources, the Japanese government wants to opt out of eastern corridor as it would mainly cater to transportation of coal and steel whose turnaround time is very less. On the other hand, in the western corridor which would be mostly used by containers would ensure a quicker turnaround of wagons. Also, a certain percentage of the soft loan extended by Japan would have to spent on sourcing equipment from Japan.
|
