$650 Million to be spent on Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor Project

A $ 650 million loan was approved for the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (a freight-only rail line) that will enable quicker and more efficient movement of raw materials and finished goods between the northern and eastern parts of India. The loan is a third in a series loans.The entire work of dedicated freight corridor project, which has an estimated cost of Rs 81,500 crore, may be awarded in the next one year. “The freight corridor project has awarded over Rs. 15,000 crore worth of projects in the last six months. This more than the value of projects awarded in the last six years,” said Suresh Prabhu, Railway Minister in a statement during a conference. The Eastern Corridor is 1,840 km long and extends from Ludhiana to Kolkata. The World Bank is supporting the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (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. The first loan of $975 million for the 343 km Khurja-Kanpur section in the EDFC program was approved by the World Bank Board in May 2011 and is already under implementation. So far it has awarded contracts worth $700 million for this section. Compensation has been awarded for about 95 percent of the 1,410 ha of land being acquired from 29,253 affected farmers for EDFC1 (Khurja-Kanpur section). The second loan of $1.1 billion for EDFC2 which covers 402 km from Kanpur to Mughal Sarai was approved by the World Bank in April 2014. Under EDFC2, civil works contract for about $800 million has been awarded and contracts worth about $240 million, for establishing rail systems, are under procurement. The corridor is being worked upon as a crucial element of India’s trillion-dollar infrastructure agenda.