Railways opens Rs. 12,000-crore worth projects for private, foreign investment.

The Railways is opening up for investment by foreign and domestic players sanctioned projects worth Rs. 12,000 crore.

This amount would go up if one were to add the high-speed rail link projects costing almost Rs. 77,000 crore which are yet to be sanctioned, and some projects - such as the North-South freight corridor and passenger terminal development of several stations - whose costs are yet to be worked out.

The Railways has sanctioned projects running into lakhs of crores on which work has not started because of dearth of funds. Broadly, the Ministry is putting up for private participation projects that are expected to be financially remunerative and on which construction work has not started. Also, many of these projects have the provision of a subsidy element - called viability gap funding - from the Finance Ministry.

'Most of the projects - with the exception of some such as high-speed rail links - have been sanctioned by Parliament. The plan is to put out these projects and get investor response. We will accordingly prioritise the processing of these projects,' said a Ministry official.

HBL