The Railways have listed joint ventures with state governments to involve them in funding infrastructure projects, taking off of the broadband venture and new initiatives for resource mobilisation as the main achievements during the first year of the present BJP government.
Setting a new trend for funding of the pending infrastructure projects, the Railways have recently signed joint venture agreements with Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh governments and invited financial institutions to pick up equity in them.
The pending projects require about Rs 35,000 crore for completion. The Railways are also entering into joint venture for suburban rail projects like the Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation and links to new ports through the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) route, adopted for the first time for Pipavav.
These measures would take care of nearly Rs 5618 crore worth of pending projects, a paper, prepared by railways ministry to mark one year of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, says.
The much touted broadband venture has taken off with the company getting registration and the appointment of consultancy giant McKinsey to prepare a business plan for the ambitious project.
The project aims at setting up an optical fibre network along the 62,800 km rail network across the country over which the railways have exclusive right of way.
McKinsey would prepare the business plan for the organisation by November and the Railways aim at generating Rs 500 crore from the project this fiscal itself, the paper says.
Underlining other initiatives to boost the sagging bottomline of the country
