A rail ancillary park will soon come up in this Uttar Pradesh town at an estimated cost of Rs 1,300 crore to cater to the growing needs of the rail industry, especially the Modern Coach Factory (MCF) here.
The state administration is in the process of notifying the 400 acres of land identified for the rail ancillary park -- a first-of-its kind project -- near Fatehpur rail station and the railway freight corridor.
"We are going to notify about 400 acres of land for the rail park project soon as all other formalities are completed," Fatehpur District Magistrate Aunjaneya Kumar Singh said.
The park will house manufacturers of auxiliaries needed at the Raebareli MCF, including components required for bogies, fabrication and furnishing items, electrical equipment, springs and rubber parts, among others. It is part of the "Make in India" initiative of the Centre.
The MCF, at Lalganj, is the third facility in India that produces railway compartments. The other two are the Integral Coach Factory at Perambur in Tamil Nadu and the Rail Coach Factory at Kapurthala in Punjab. The MCF was inaugurated by then Congress President Sonia Gandhi in 2012.
"There are about 50 players who have shown keenness to set up units at the rail park," a senior Railways official at MCF who is involved in coordinating with the state government to speed up the project, told IANS.
Apart from notifying the land, the Uttar Pradesh government is giving an interest subsidy for buying land, building infrastructure, providing 100 per cent reimbursement on stamp duty to the developer and 50 per cent reimbursement to individual buyers for the project.
"The Rail Ancillary Park is an ambitious project and it has to be made into a reality," Rajesh Agarwal, General Manager, MCF, told this correspondent.
Increasing its output at a faster pace since the first modern coach rolled out in August 2014, MCF is slated to produce 1,500 in the current fiscal besides planning to manufacture Metro and aluminium coaches at its state-of-the-art facility.
In 2015-16, MCF produced 76 modern coaches and the number has now reached 368 with the target of 1,500 in 2018-19 and 3,000 in 2019-20.
Besides supplying to the Indian Railways, MCF is also exploring the possibility of exporting coaches to West Asia for which negotiations are underway.
MCF will be a major beneficiary of the ancillary park project as the transportation cost, about 10 per cent of the total product cost, will be reduced once production begins at the proposed park.
Since the project site is just 10 km from the freight corridor and 7 km from the Kanpur-Allahabad six-lane highway, many major players have shown interest, the Railways official said.
While it would cost about Rs 300 crore for the land, investments worth Rs 1,000 crore are estimated to be made in the project.
(Arun Kumar Das is a Delhi-based freelance journalist. He can be contacted at akdas2005@gmail.com <mailto:akdas2005@gmail.com>)
--IANS
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