Centre speeds up ₹44,000 cr east-coast freight corridor

The Indian Railways has decided to invest ₹44,000 crore to build a 1,100-km green field freight corridor on the east coast connecting Kharagpur in West Bengal with Vijaywada in Andhra Pradesh with a freight carrying capacity of about 200 million tons per annum, said Managing Director, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation (DFCC), Anurag Sachan, adding that there is very heavy traffic on this route and to ease congestion, the work on the proposal is currently in full swing and that the project will be funded from multilateral agencies along with some equity from Indian Railways. The corridor will connect mineral rich areas of the country to industries in the south. The eastern and western corridors that are being constructed to connect the mainland with the ports on the western and the eastern coasts of the country are slated to be commissioned. The first phase of the two dedicated freight corridors project, India’s first mega railway project since Independence, being constructed at the cost of ₹81,000 crore, is likely to be completed by the end of this year. The 1,500-km long western freight corridor runs from Dadri near Delhi to Jawahar Lal Nehru Port Trust in Mumbai while the 1,800-km eastern corridor starts from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal. The construction cost of the western corridor is being funded by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which has provided around ₹33,000 crore as soft loan while the eastern corridor is partially being financed by the World Bank.