Rly min to roll out policy on pvt container trains in Jan

Come January 2007, and the railway ministry's policy for allowing private participation for running container trains in the country will finally take off. The ministry, at a meeting on Saturday, finalised the modalities for opening container traffic for private participation, after a meeting with the 14 private companies which had paid licence fees for participating in the project.

Subsequently, the model concession agreement (MCA) is expected to be signed in the first week of January, which would formally implement the project.

Bothra Shipping has informed the ministry officials that its infrastructure is ready, and it would be in a position to ply its container train from January end onwards. The company would be running its train on the Kolkata-Ghaziabad route, known as the sponge iron route.

Major players like Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Infrastructure and Leasing, and Rajeev Chandrasekhar's Indian Infrastructure and Leasing are among the 14 participating parties.

Ministry sources cited the meeting as a significant development, considering the fact that it had been one of the most ambitious projects Indian Railways undertook. Also with each company expected to invest Rs 300-500 crore on infrastructure for running trains, the project is being seen as a gold mine for the railways.

However, as reported by Business Standard earlier, the MCA, consisting of the rules and regulations for the project, was received by the concerned parties only a day before the meeting, and apparently they had some issues over these rules.

According to sources, the players' major concern was the haulage charge. The ministry has hiked haulage charges thrice in the past one year, the last time being in April this year.

The ministry officials said that it was their prerogative to take a call on that, but they did assure the parties that there won't be any further revision.

The parties also requested the ministry to get the wagon examination done by RITES also, apart from the Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO), which normally does it.

The ministry accepted all these requests and assured them that they would be given equal track sharing and engine sharing time vis-a-vis Container Corporation of India (Concor), which currently has the monopoly over container traffic.

Sources said that it would take the 10 companies, which have submitted Rs 50 crore each as license fees, for running trains on domestic as well as international routes, around six months to ply their trains.

While some companies like Indian Infrastructure and Leasing have their infrastructure ready, the others are at different stages of setting up theirs.