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The Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia has said that it should be our objective to transform Indian Railways in the Eleventh Five Year Plan to benchmark its alround improvement in terms of expansion, modernization and efficiency. Delivering a keynote address at the daylong seminar on Public-Private Partnership in Development of Rail Infrastructure to mark the second Foundation Day of the Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd. (RVNL) here today, Dr. Ahluwalia said while some of the projects needed to be funded out of general revenues, the rest of the railway projects should be financed through non-recourse funding.
Talking of the importance of public-private partnership in the development of infrastructure in general and that of the railways in particular, Dr. Ahluwalia said that public-private partnership was more than getting revenues from the existing system. It was to collateralise the revenues. He said that public-private partnership also involved joint activity wherein suppliers of services brought in some finances from private sources. At present, legal framework prevented Indian Railways from borrowing directly. He said that RVNL should function as an instrument for getting finances from private sector. Besides, it should collateralise to raise revenues of Indian Railways. For this, it needed non-recourse finances.
Dr. Alhuwalia mentioned that a committee on infrastructure to give effect to the development and strengthening of infrastructure with the help of public-private partnership in keeping with the Common Minimum Programme of the Government has been set up . Indian
railways formed an important component of this committee. He, however, emphasized the need to set up a Rail Tariff Regularity Authority to regulate business segment of Indian Railways and to ensure that non-viable infrastructural projects were funded by the general revenues.
The Minister of State for Railways Shri Naranbhai Rathwa in his inaugural address said that 56 bankable projects at a cost of Rs. 12000 crores has been entrusted to RVNL for completion under a time bound programme. In this connection, Shri Rathwa called for changing the heretofore held rate-of-return proposition to develop backward areas otherwise the balanced development of infrastructure in the country would be retarded.
The Chairman Railway Board Shri R.K. Singh, in his capacity as Chairman, RVNL, said that Indian Railways have taken a big stride in mobilization of resources from other than the usual sources. In this connection , the challenge before RVNL was to mobilize Rs. 8000 crores and structure its projects for self-sustaining.
The Managing Director, RVNL, Shri J.P. Shukla in his welcome address said that RVNL aimed at creating additional capacity without constraints.
The RVNL was set up on January 4, 2003 as a special purpose vehicle to oversee and execute Rs. 15,000 crore National Rail Vikas Yojana projects to strengthen, improve and remove capacity bottleneck on the high density Golden Quadrilateral routes connecting the four metros, its diagonals and port connectivity.
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