A Guarantee Agreement for World Bank (IBRD) lending of $650 million to the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd (DFCCIL) for the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor-III (EDFC-III) Project has been signed between the Government of India and the World Bank in the national capital. This agreement was signed by Raj Kumar, Joint Secretary (MI), Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance on behalf of the Government of India and Hisham Abdo, Acting Country Director, World Bank, India, on behalf of the World Bank.
The objective of the EDFC-III Project is to augment rail transport capacity, improve service quality and enhance freight carriage throughput on the 401-km Ludhiana-Khurja section of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor, and develop institutional capacity of DFCCIL to build, maintain and operate the entire DFC network. This project is in continuation of Phase-I and II of the EDFC projects being implemented by DFCCIL with a World Bank loan of $975 million and $1,100 million respectively on the Dadri-Khurja-Kanpur and Kanpur-Mughal Sarai stretches of the Eastern Rail Corridor (Ludhiana-Delhi-Kolkata). The project will directly benefit the power and heavy manufacturing industries of northern and eastern India, which rely on the railway network for transportation of their material inputs and also for the distribution of bulk processed and semi-processed commodities and consumer goods. Railway passengers will also be benefitted through decongestion of the existing passenger lines.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.