Railways sees six-fold boost in PPP projects

After years of disappointments, the railways has finally begun seeing better days for its focus on public-private partnership projects, which have seen over six-fold jump in the last couple of years in comparison to one decade of abysmal performance.

The railways has got about Rs 18,000 crore worth of PPP projects in the last couple of years in contrast to just Rs 3,000 crore absorbed in 2002-12.

“In between 2002-12, the railways undertook 11 projects under PPP worth Rs 3,100 crores. The railways sought to execute PPP projects but did not attract much of private participation,” said a senior railway board official.

However, the times seem to have changed for the better in recent times for the railways in undertaking PPP projects. Incidentally, the recent Rail Budgets, including those of the previous UPA regime, laid a lot of focus on PPP for a turnaround in Railways.

“Since 2012 when we came out with model concession agreement for PPP, there has been an upswing with a total of 22 projects being implemented currently,” said the official.

These projects involve laying of a total of 2,600 km of tracks at a combined cost of Rs 17,900 crores,” said the official, adding that most of such PPP projects are in connecting ports, mines, including seven of them which are funded by customers (Rs 2,200 crores worth of laying 400 km of tracks).

The railways claims that a better policy in place has boosted the confidence in the private sector to partner in rail development. “The next step is to put in place a dispute mechanism in place through the proposed Rail Development Authority,” said the official.