Comments
French financial agency AFD is likely to make a final commitment on providing loan for the Kochi Metro project by the end of December.
An appraisal mission led by Hoang, AFD’s Senior Transport expert based in Paris, had detailed discussions and analysis on the project and expressed satisfaction in the mission.
The next team from AFD is expected to be here to evaluate the project during September. AFD has stated that they could provide a loan of up to €130 million, which is around Rs 1,000 crore.
KMRL optimistic
Addressing reporters after holding detailed discussion with AFD representatives, KMRL Managing Director Elias George said KMRL is in line with the pre-requisites for the funding from AFD. “If things go well, we will get a commitment by the end of this year,” he said.
Both KMRL and AFD agree that more attention has to be given to the environmental and social impact of the project and to the replacement and rehabilitation processes.
The French agency is ‘sensitive’ to the impact on environment, carbon emission, land filling and impact of civil construction on environment, he said.
R&R policy
KMRL has already invited expressions of interest from international agencies for preparing the social impact and R&R policy for Kochi Metro.
The agency will be finalised shortly and will be engaged to prepare a comprehensive policy, in accordance with the existing R&R polices adopted by the Centre and State government as well as agencies such as Asian Development Bank.
The AFD representative said that they visited sites and collected information for evaluating the project, and the team that would visit KMRL would make the detailed investigation based on which their board would take a decision by December.
External funding
KMRL, which hopes to raise Rs 2,170 crore as external funding for the project, is expecting AFD to provide 50 per cent of the amount which works out to Rs 1,035 crore and the remaining by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The total project cost is around Rs 5,182 crore.
Meanwhile, E.Sreedharan, Principal Advisor to DMRC, told reporters that the civil works for the Kochi Metro project would begin by May-end. The work to build the viaduct and metro stations in the all the four stretches would be awarded shortly.
The signing of an MoU with KMRL is a pre-requisite to finalising the contracts, he added.
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.