New Delhi, July 1
The World Bank on Wednesday
approved $650 million in the third phase of loans for the Eastern
Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) that will make for faster and more
efficient movement of goods between the northern and eastern parts of
the country.
The bank respectively sanctioned $975 million and
$1.1 billion, both with maturity periods of 22 years with a 7-year grace
period, for first two phases.
"The World Bank is supporting the
EDFC as a series of projects in which the three sections with a total
route length of 1,146 km will be delivered sequentially, but with
considerable overlap in their construction schedules," it said in a
statement here.
The first loan of $975 million for the 343 km
Khurja-Kanpur section in the EDFC programme, approved in May 2011, is
already under implementation.
The second loan of $1.1 billion for
the second phase covering 402 km from Kanpur to Mughal Sarai was
approved by the World Bank in April 2014.
Through the three
phases, the multilateral lender will help build the 401-km stretch in
the Ludhiana-Khurja section in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab of the
1,840-km EDFC between Ludhiana and Kolkata.
The project will help
increase the capacity of these freight-only lines by raising the
axle-load limit from 22.9 to 25 tonnes and enable speeds of up to 100 km
an hour, the World Bank said.
"It will also help develop the
institutional capacity of the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of
India Ltd. (DFCCIL) to build and maintain the DFC infrastructure
network," it added.
"Implementing the Dedicated Freight Corridor
programme will provide India the opportunity to create one of the
world's largest freight operations. The corridor will benefit from the
new rail infrastructure, bringing jobs and much-needed development to
some of India's poorest regions," said Onno Ruhl, World Bank country
director in India.
"Moving freight from road to rail will reduce the carbon footprint of freight by 2.25 times," he added.
The EDFC is planned to be built on two main routes of the western and the eastern corridors.
These
corridors are expected to help increase railway transportation capacity
through high-capacity, higher-speed dedicated freight corridors along
the Golden Quadrilateral highway network connecting Delhi, Mumbai,
Chennai and Kolkata.
The Golden Quadrilateral accounts for more than 60 percent of India's total rail freight movement.
The
central government is also planning to build seven integrated
manufacturing clusters around the EDFC. These clusters on either side of
EDFC will be set up with an investment of about $1 billion.
