Comments
India has not clarified whether it is out of the Chabahar-Zahidan railway project in Iran as was being rumoured, but has said that the appointment of a consultant by the Islamic nation to finalise outstanding technical and financial issues is still awaited.
“We have seen some speculative reports about Chabahar Port and the Chabahar-Zahidan railway project,” said MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava at a media briefing on Thursday.
Feasibility report
On the rail project, Srivastava said that IRCON was appointed by India to assess the feasibility of the project and was working with CDTIC, an Iranian company under their Ministry of Railways, on the matter. IRCON completed the site inspection and review of the feasibility report, and detailed discussions were then held on other relevant aspects of the project, which had to take into account the financial challenges that Iran was facing.
“In December 2019, these issues were reviewed in detail at the 19th India-Iran Joint Commission Meeting in Tehran. The Iranian side was to nominate an authorised entity to finalise outstanding technical and financial issues. This is still awaited,” said Srivastava.
On the Chabahar port, the spokesperson said that since its operationalisation in 2016there has been significant progress on the port project. “An Indian company has been operating the port since 2018 and has steadily scaled up the traffic. Since December 2018, 82 vessels have been handled there, including 52 in the last 12 months alone. The port handled 12 lakh tonnes of bulk cargo and 8,200 containers. Proactive measures are currently underway to increase the usage of Chabahar port, both for Afghanistan and Central Asia,” he said.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.