Railways to rope in private sector for modernising 400 stations: Jaitley

Indian Raliways will soon invite bids from private entities for modernisation of 400 railway stations across the country, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Tuesday.

"Very shortly, the Railways will come up with its proposed bids for the development of 400 stations in the country," he said at the foundation day function of India Infrastructure Finance Company.

"Railways has now come on to the right track. It is inviting private sector, including foreign investments, in infrastructure. GE and Alstom have agreed to make major investments in Bihar," the minister said.

Referring to the Railways' efforts to attract infrastructure investment, he said, "The Railways has issued tax free bonds, has recently managed big financing from LIC, besides foreign investments."

Jaitley stressed that public investment has to lead the way in tackling the impact of the global slowdown, adding that a lot of resources were put into national highways, rural roads and railways during 2015.

"The result is visible now - the stalled highway projects have got moving. As a result of increased public investment, even private sector players who got bogged down in their disputes have re-entered the field," he said.

The minister also said state-run ports sector needs to be overhauled and moved towards privatisation.

"The structure of state sector ports needs a rethink, moving towards privatisation of state-run trust ports," Jaitley said.

"If major ports don't overhaul their structures, they will seriously fall behind in competition with minor ports," the minister said.

The National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) is already in place, and the first meeting of the NIIF was held in New Delhi last week.

Jaitley, who heads the NIIF Governing Council, told reporters that the progress with regard to the proposals of sovereign funds from the United Arab Emirates, Britain, Russia and Singapore were particularly discussed.

While the government will contribute Rs20,000 crore to the fund, another amount of Rs20,000 crore is expected to come from private investors.

The union cabinet in July approved the creation of the NIIF with a corpus of Rs20,000 crore for development of infrastructure projects, including the stalled ones.