Germany’s Deutsche Bahn Engineering & Consulting is in talks with Indian Port Rail Corp. Ltd (IPRCL) to from a joint venture to develop rail connectivity for Indian ports.
Minister for road transport and highways and shipping Nitin Gadkari said that India and Germany were working together on projects worth Rs1 trillion being implemented by IPRCL.
The idea is to set up a JV with Deutsche Bahn Engineering & Consulting for setting up railway port connectivity projects. This will be a PSU to PSU arrangement. Deutsche Bahn will bring in the latest technology.
IPRCL and Deutsche Bahn signed a MoU on modernization of rail port connectivity and port rail facilities of Indian ports during the Maritime India Summit last year.
“Basically in railways there is always a lot of scope. So this particular German government company and they have signed an MoU for mutual cooperation…Now, as far as I believe, they have had a few rounds of discussions regarding where there could be synergies between the two,” shipping secretary Rajive Kumar said.
“This will improve the port hinterland connections to the railway network of Indian Railways. The MoU foresees comprehensive cooperation for designing the connection projects, drawing up the operations plan, and carrying out the engineering design and project management through to delivery to the port authority,” a spokesperson for Deutsche Bahn said, adding that negotiations are still in progress with IPRCL.
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