World Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank sanction Rs 6,325 cr for Pune Metro

Pune Guardian Minister Girish Bapat said a special purpose vehicle will be created for the disbursement of funds

Residents of Pune may finally heave a sigh of relief as their traffic woes may finally be getting solved. World Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment (AII) Bank have sanctioned an amount of Rs 6,325.50 crore for the construction of Pune Metro Rail project.

"The State Government had created a committee to look into solving the public transport issues of the city. On the recommendation of the committee the Maharashtra Government had sent proposal to the Centre. The Ministry of Urban Development and the Finance Ministry worked together to get this loan sanctioned. The loan was sanctioned for Pune on September 14, 2016," said Girish Bapat, Pune Guardian Minister.

 

Bapat in a press statement also clarified that a special purpose vehicle will be created for the disbursement of funds. These funds will be sanctioned in two to three tranches.

"After the Pune Metro Rail project plan was proposed to the Ministry of Urban Development, the project was then referred to Department of Economic Affairs, GoI. This was discussed at the steering committee meeting of DoEA. The DoEA then gave approval to raise 50 per cent loan amount from two institutes. Both WB and AII Bank will contribute 50-50 to the loan amount," said Kunal Kumar, Pune Municipal Commissioner.

Kumar also added that PMC will begin discussion with the respective banks in the next two to three weeks. "We will begin the process to meet the required officials at WB and AII Bank and begun the formalities, which include study of feasibility report and other formalities. We are hoping to sign the loan agreement in the next three months," he added.

Other than the 50 per cent funds coming from WB and AII Bank, 20 per cent funds will come from the Centre and State, each and rest of 10 per cent will be contributed by two municipalities of the city. So far the Centre has sanctioned Rs 2,118 crore, State Government has committed Rs 2,460 crore and both the city corporations-Pune Municipal Corporation and Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation-will sanction a total of Rs 1,278.10 crore for the project. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation had submitted the proposal for Pune Metro rail in 2009 estimating the project cost to be Rs 7,984 crore, which was revised in 2015 with new estimate to Rs 11,522 crore.

The Pune Metro plan was submitted to the public investment board in 2014. The total proposed length of the metro in Pune is 31.51 km. It will run on two corridors the first 16.59 km between Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation and Swargate and the second 14.92 km from Vanaz to Ramwadi.

The project has been slowly getting around several hurdles. In August this year, the Central Railways gave in-principle approval for the project.