The Hindu Business Line : PwC, E&Y submit bids to Rlys for selecting pvt partners

The Railways has announced plans to set up four new factories to meet its rolling stock requirements in the future. For setting up 4 new loco, coach factories

New Delhi , Dec. 22

Consulting firms PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst and Young have submitted bids for advising the Indian Railways on the process to be adopted for selecting private firms that would set up rolling stock factories for Railways. The bids are being evaluated.

On behalf of the Railway Ministry, RITES, a public sector unit under the Ministry of Railways, had invited competitive bids from consulting firms to provide advisory services on "development strategy and bid process management for selection of developers for new factories".

New factories

The Railways has announced plans to set up four new factories to meet its rolling stock requirements. They include two factories to manufacture locomotives (one for manufacturing 150 diesel locomotives per year and another to manufacture 120 electric locomotives per year) apart from one factory to churn out 1,100 passenger coaches per year and another to manufacture 1,00,000 wheel discs per year. The factories are likely to be set up along with private partners.

According to the Ministry sources, "Two firms have submitted bids for assisting the Railway Ministry in finalising the strategy for evaluation of various methods including public private partnership (PPP) models for setting up the factories. They would also assist in selecting the private sector partner for development of these facilities if necessary."

To increase output

Apart from the above new factories, the Indian Railways plans to increase the production capacity of its coach manufacturing units at Kapurthala and Chennai at an estimated cost of Rs 111 crore.

Production capacity at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai, would be increased to manufacture 1,500 coaches per year and at the Rail Coach Factory (RCF), Kapurthala to 1,400 coaches per year from the present installed capacities of 1,000 coaches per year (at both units).

The Railways is also planning to increase production capacities of Diesel Locomotive Works (DLW) and Chittaranjan Locomotive Works (CLW).