Work on the much-delayed dedicated railway freight corridor is expected to begin with contracts worth Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion) to be awarded before the end of the current financial year.
The contracts would be for the western arm of the Rs 77,000-crore (Rs 770-billion) Dedicated Freight Corridor project.
The western arm includes the 1,500-kilometre-long Delhi-Mumbai stretch that is expected to ease and ramp up Indian Railways' freight traffic between Dadri near Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Mumbai traversing through Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
"Overall, Rs 10,000-crore (Rs 100-billion) bids would be invited by us this year for awarding civil engineering contracts for package I & II of the first phase of the western corridor. This will be followed by bids for awarding electrification and signaling works in six months," said a senior executive of Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd (DFCCIL), a company set up in 2006 under the aegis of the railway ministry.
Freight traffic on the Golden Quadrilateral linking Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Howrah - and its two diagonals Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Howrah - carries more than 55 per cent of revenue earning freight traffic of Indian Railways.
The existing routes of Howrah-Delhi on the eastern corridor and Mumbai-Delhi on the western are highly saturated creating the need for dedicated routes.
Once commissioned, the project would mark an inflexion point in the 150-year-old history of Indian Railways which has so far run only mixed traffic across its network, failing to capture the high demand for freight movement.
The corridor would enable freight trains to run at an average speed of over 65 kmph as against 22 kmph currently.
The government also plans to develop a Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) with manufacturing zones along the freight corridor.
The western corridor is being developed in two phases. Phase-I consists of the 950-km-long Rewari-Vadodara section.
Civil engineering works for this phase is being awarded in three packages of Rewari-Ajmer, Ajmer-Palanpur and Palanpur-Vadodara. Phase-II consists of the 565-km-long Vadodara-JNPT stretch.
DFCCIL has already tied up Rs 4,500-crore (Rs 45-billion) funding as loan from the Japanese Bank of Industrial Cooperation for the first phase of the western corridor which is likely to be commissioned in March 2016.
"Funding of Rs 11,500 crore (Rs 115 billion) for Phase-II is also being tied up with the Japanese government. They are currently appraising the project and the next appraisal is due in July," the official said. Phase-II is expected to be commissioned in December 2016.
The DFCCIL executive also said the Japanese government had reaffirmed its funding commitment for the project despite the recent disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant that followed a massive earthquake in March in that country.
For developing the 1,800-km eastern corridor of the project, the company is also seeking a $2.4-billion loan from the World Bank.
"The first phase loan agreement of $975 million has already been concluded. It is only left to be formally cleared by the World Bank board now," the executive informed.
