More rail lines, Vande Bharat tenders, to be immediate agenda for Vaishna
The task is cut out for Ashwini Vaishnaw, who retained the railways portfolio. The transporter that virtually runs an operational deficit is hugely dependent on Budget funds and borrowed monies for its capital expenditure.
The task is cut out for Ashwini Vaishnaw, who retained the railways portfolio. The transporter that virtually runs an operational deficit is hugely dependent on Budget funds and borrowed monies for its capital expenditure. While the Narendra Modi 2.0 government did not let the capex growth slow, unless the project financing models are rejigged and the railway’s own finances are improved with additional increases in passenger traffic, the investment pace will stagger. It is important to get the public private partnership project going in more segments of railway infrastructure Over the last six months, the speed of projects had slowed down considerably in the run up to the general elections. “Whether it’s tenders for Vande Bharat trains or network augmentation, we expect the ministry will swing into action pretty quickly,” said Harshit Kapadia, VP (Consumer Durable & Electrical and Capital Goods) at Elara Securities. For instance, it’s likely that the ministry will float tenders for about 100-200 Vande Bharat trains besides coming out with another set of tenders for the Vande Bharat Sadharan trains, which are regular speed trains offering experience similar to semi high-speed Vande Bharat trains. “Some of the tenders in the pipeline will come out. The focus will be on Vande Bharat sleeper class,” said an analyst. The ministry is likely to speed up the infrastructure development which includes doubling of lines, adding new lines and gauge conversion. In the interim budget 2024-25, nearly 30% of the allocations were made to the network augmentation out of the total railways budget. “They will be adding around 5,500 kms of new lines,” said the analyst quoted above. Another major focus area for the new minister will be the ramping up of Kavach system. Earlier, just three companies were competing in the market. But because the government has plans to cover about 5,000 kms of rail tracks with Kavach every year (by 2025-26), up from about 1,500 kms annually now, it allowed (in last November) two more players — Germany’s Siemens and Japan’s Kyosan — to install Kavach system on the rail network. That’s not that. Even though the indigenously-developed Kavach system will remain in focus, the ministry will keep on experimenting with other safety mechanisms. Experts said that the ministry will fast-track the ambitious HSR (high-speed rail) project between Ahmadabad and Mumbai. “More HSR corridors could be announced in the first few months, including Ahmadabad-Delhi, Delhi-Chandigarh, Amritsar-Jammu, Delhi-Varanasi and Varanasi-Howrah. This is part of the BJP’s manifesto, so this will be a priority area for the ministry, ” said Elara’s Kapadia.