Indian Railways taps multiple non-budget financing options for infra development

Prabhu says Railways best destination for pension and sovereign wealth funds to invest

The Indian Railways is exploring multiple non budget funding options to implement projects including high speed trains, rolling stock, station development signalling and infrastructure development. Apart from approaching multilateral organisaions like World Bank, Asian Development Bank, the IR is in talks with public sector banks including State Bank of India, Infrastructure Development Finance Company and pension and sovereign wealth funds. This is in addition to the budgetary allocation of Rs 1.21 lakh crore for the current fiscal.

Railways minister Suresh Prabhu at the conference organised here by Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC) announced that the World Bank has agreed to anchor Railway Infrastructure Development Fund with a corpus of $5 billion over 7 years. It will be co anchored by pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. ''Railways will be the best destination for pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. They are quite keen that their capital is safeguarded as there is permanent revenue and it is increasing,'' he added.

He informed that projects capable of repaying debt will be financed through public private partnership m(PPP) model.

This apart, Prabhu said the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has agreed to provide loan at 0.1% with 50 year tenure and 15 year moratorium for the Rs 1 lakh crore Mumbai Ahmedabad bullet train. The project implementation period is slated to be six years between 2017 and 2023 for the 508 km high speed project. The operating speed will be 320 kmph while the maximum pseed will be 350 kmph.

Life Insurance Corporation has already provided Rs 1.50 lakh crore of loan for 30 year tenure of which Rs 10,000 crore have been so far used.

Prabhu said the redevelopment of railway station will be carried out in an integrated manner to house railway trains, buses, rikshaws and taxies. ''This is a major opportunity and it is going to be a massive exercise even at the global level. It is a challenging issue. Two weeks ago agreement has been signed with among IR, Gujarat government and the Surat municipal Corporation for the redevelopment of Surat station and two more will start soon in Delhi and around. This will increase non fare revenue of the railways especially when 2/3 comes from freight and 1/3 from passenger traffic,'' he noted.