French help sought in modernising India’s rail infrastructure

French companies are expected to play an increasing role in developing India's railway infrastructure as the country seeks to run high-speed trains and develop multimodal transportation system to improve connectivity in a country still lacking in modern infrastructure.

The Indian Railways and the Regional Economic Department of the Embassy of France in India have jointly organised a conference with the objective of bringing together recognised specialists in the railway sector from France and India, to find the best solutions for an Indian high-speed and semi-high speed railway along with multimodal stations.

French expertise and technology, brought by the French companies operating in India, can play their role in this process as India targets up to $1 billion of private investment by 2017 to build new rail lines.

India and France have a long-standing bilateral co-operation in the railway sector of over 30 years. During the state visit to India by French President Francois Hollande, in February 2013, the French Railways and the Indian Railways signed a new MoU centred on four key areas of co-operation, namely: high-speed trains, station renovation, urban trains and railway network modernisation.

In June 2014, the French Railways concluded and presented to the Indian Railways a feasibility study on ''operations and development'' for high speed rail on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor (534 km). This report is under examination of the Railway Board.

Speaking on the occasion, railway minister Suresh Prabhu said there are multiple areas in the rail sector where India and France can work together. He called upon French companies to increase their presence in India as doing business in India is not that cumbersome.

Prabhu sought cooperation of France in high speed train operations and also in areas of safety, customer service and station development and multimodal stations. The minister said that safety is of paramount importance in the interest of commuters.

Prabhu said that as a commuter spends maximum time in a rail compartment, there is a need to upgrade and innovate facilities and services to make it more comfortable. He said India is trying to develop its rail network to global standards and the cooperation with countries like France will be quite meaningful to achieve this objective.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants private companies, which have held back from investing in freight lines because of the struggle to win the necessary approvals, to build more of the last mile links where bottlenecks bite the most, he said.

Besides passenger traffic, the government looks to link ports and its current national transportation networks to ease growing congestion, which has delayed coal imports for power plants and contributed to a power supply crisis.

Such investment would more than double the $400 million that India's state-owned railways have attracted in the decade since they allowed limited private participation and help fund crucial "last mile" links to ports.

Cash-starved, India's British-built rail system has added just 11,000 kilometres of track in the 67 years since independence, and the network has come to symbolise the poor state of India's infrastructure. China has managed 14,000 km of new lines in the five years to 2011.

Over-crowding at ports has been delaying much-needed coal deliveries to Indian power plants and supplies of iron ore for steelmakers at a time when there is already a shortfall.

Companies will now be allowed to part-own new rail lines for variable periods of time rather than a fixed number of years, said Mukul Saran Mathur, an executive director at the Railway Board. The railways will also take on more of a project's financial risk, Mathur said, without giving further details.

"We have put in place the appropriate policy. Demand is rising," he said, adding that the government had given approval to domestic infrastructure companies such as Navayuga and Balaji Infra to build up to 316 km of lines within two years.

The ministry also wants foreign operators which own stakes in Indian ports, like Denmark's Maersk, to invest but so far none had shown any interest.

The government estimates port operators will spend $8 billion over the next two years to expand capacity to meet rising imports.

That rapid expansion worries port operators, who say the government's proposed $1 billion worth of last mile railway links won't help with bottlenecks on the wider network.

Essar Ports, a large port operator, wants to build new rail lines to help meet an expected doubling of its cargo handling capacity to 200 million tonnes in the next few years.

But the state-owned railways, which have a monopoly on the provision of goods wagons, are failing to provide sufficient wagons to service the extra cargo.