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The Railway Ministry is once again mulling a new policy to attract private investments in rail connectivity and capacity augmentation projects.
The policy would be of interest to any investor eyeing for rail connectivity including logistics players, rail link users such as ports, steel, or coal companies, State Governments and local bodies, ministry officials claimed.
The trouble is investors are not biting. Despite a ‘new' policy for industry connectivity in 2010, and yet another one for connectivity to coal and iron ore last year, the Railways has a huge number of pending projects that require about Rs 100,000 crore investments.
The throw-forward on new lines is Rs 60,000 crore, while doubling and gauge conversion projects require Rs 38,000 crore. The Railways do not have funds in place to implement these projects.
The latest policy revision — when finalised — will replace two earlier policies that sought investments from the private sector in rail connectivity projects. In the last two years, the Railways had formulated two policies — railways infrastructure for industry (r3i) and rail connectivity to coal and iron ore (r2ci).
“We faced problems while getting inter-Ministerial approvals for some proposals based on earlier policies. So, we will now finalise broad parameters with inputs from all stakeholders,” said an official source.
There were at least seven proposals under the r3i policy including from ports of Dhamra, Rewas and Dighi.
The fate of project proposals based on earlier policies is not yet clear, but the thinking is that the Railways will provide the project developers an option to decide whether they want to adopt the new policy option, said a source.
The Ministry has invited comments from various stakeholders on this policy.
Many steel, coal, mining companies have earlier evinced invest in creating additional capacity.
NEW POLICY
The new policy – under finalisation — provides six broad investment models and allows for finalisation of specifics on a case by case basis.
The models include non-Government Railway model for last mile rail link projects, special purpose vehicle model for bankable projects, projects on build-operate-transfer model to be taken up on competitive bidding and links funded by users.
These models vary depending on land acquisition, cost and revenue sharing and period of operations.
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