After much delays, the 540-km-long Sonnagar-Dankuni section of the eastern dedicated freight corridor, to come up on public-private partnership, is finally being put on the fast track.
After being taken up by the steering committee of the Prime Minister’s Office, whose mandate is to get an investment of R1 lakh crore in six months, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation (DFCC), the SPV of the Indian Railways, is getting new traffic forecasts for the R16,000-crore freight corridor. This is a key requirement before the project is put before the investors.
The work of preparing the forecast report has been given to CRIS. To get the financial planning of the corridor, which has been broken into two slices ? (Dankuni-Gomoh (276 km) and Gomoh-Sonnagar (264 km) ? the DFCC has hired UK-based consultant Grant Thornton, which will prepare the report on the capital structure, revenue model and the financial viability of the project.
The project has been broken into two phases as the investment was too stiff for a single private player as the stretch would primarily be carrying coal and iron ore traffic in the Dhanbad, Raniganj and Jharia region.
?We have hired a financial consultant who would prepare the report on the capital structure of the project after taking inputs from the investors. New traffic projections for the route would also be done,? RK Gupta, MD, DFCC told FE. The stretch is a part of the 1,839-km-long eastern freight corridor, which runs from Ludhiana in
Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal.
The Sonnagar-Dankuni route is directly being monitored by the PMO and despite several deadlines, the railways have failed to find an investor for the project, which could delay the completion of the R95,000-crore dedicated freight corridors (3,300 km), running on the eastern and western flanks of the country.
?The project was discussed at the steering committee meeting chaired by the principal secretary of the PMO. We’ll set the new deadlines and are hopeful of finding investors for the project,? Arunendra Kumar, chairman, Railway Board, told FE.
The World Bank is financing the eastern corridor project from Mughal Sarai to Ludhiana, the rest of the stretch from Mughal Sarai to Dankuni is being financed in two modes-from Mughal Sarai to Sonnagar, the 150-km stretch is being financed through railway equity and the 540-km Sonnagar-Dankuni section is to be implemented on the PPP basis.
