December 03, 2008

Indian Railways pushing for freight corridors

Mr KC Jena chairman of railway board recently said that freight corridors are the flagship project of Indian Railways for which multilateral funding including raising funds from World Bank loan for the Eastern and Japanese loan for the Western corridor is being done.

Mr Jena said that while freight is the bread and butter of railways.

On the progress of dedicated freight corridors, he said that “For the eastern corridor, the World Bank has started its appraisal report and the first round of meeting has been held. There will be no problem in raising funds for the projects. The western corridor will be set up with Japanese loan and a letter of comfort from them is expected in two days time.”

Mr Jena highlighted the spectacular progress made by the railways not only in terms of achieving a cash surplus of INR 25,000 crore but also becoming the best across the world in terms of the operating ratio which is 76.03%. By the end of the year, 794 million tonnes of goods were loaded and an incremental loading of 66 million tonnes had also been achieved.