India to invest Rs 3.3 lakh cr on three new rail freight corridors

The 5,500 km-long corridors will supplement plans to lay 3,300 km of two arms of Dedicated Freight Corridor project

All earnings from freight corridors to go to Indian Railways, which would then share 35-40 per cent of it with DFCC as Track Access Charges

India will spend Rs 3.3 lakh crore to set up three new arms of the dedicated rail freight corridors, crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country over the next eight years. The 5,500-km-long new corridors would supplement the existing plans to lay 3,300-km-long two dedicated freight corridors (DFC).

“The feasibility study of the three corridors has been completed and submitted by RITES. The three corridors would be developed at a cost of Rs 3.3 lakh crore in around eight years,” said Adesh Sharma, managing director, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation (DFCC), an arm of Ministry of Railways, implementing the Rs 82,000-crore DFCC project.

In this year’s Budget, Rail Minister Suresh Prabhu had announced three new corridors: 2,328-km North-South corridor between Delhi and Chennai; 2,327-km East-West corridor between Kolkata and Mumbai; and 1,114-km East Coast corridor between Kharagpur and Vijaywada.

Sharma did not share details of the funding plan. However, DFCC officials disclosed the earning methodology for the DFCC project. “All the earnings from the freight carried by DFCC will go to Indian Railways. The railways will then share with us around 35-40 per cent of the apportioned earnings as Track Access Charges (TACs),” said H D Gujarati, director-business development, DFCC.

Sharma said the corporation would place total contracts worth Rs 10,000 crore in the current financial year, including two contracts worth Rs 2,300 crore for work on the Saharanpur-Ludhiana and Khurja-Dadri sections. A contract of Rs 900 crore would be issued for Kanpur-Mughalsarai section of the Eastern DFCC. With entire funding tied-up and contracts in place, the entire DFCC project would be implemented in phases between March 2018 and December 2019, Sharma said.