Before the state elections take place, the government has decided to expedite a much delayed project to set up engineering units for the railway locomotives, which will bring in a ton of money of around Rs. 42,000 crore in Bihar. Two global majors are against each other currently in the race.
According to sources connected who are a part of the development, USA based GE are coming in to the picture for the diesel locomotives plant, which is going to be arranged at Marhowra. Alstom, French major is winning the rat race of the manufacturing unit set ups for electric engines. A senior executive of the Railway board stated that the plans have suffered a lot in the past for about 10 years but now, they are very sure of rewarding them on the last week of this month. He also added that the interest that the foreign companies are showing is very encouraging and will bring in more and more investment from outside India for the railways.
This project had been first talked about in the years 2006 by Lalu Prasad Yadav, former Railway Minister. But now BJP government has put a lot of light on this project as they are gearing up to battle with the Yadav & Co in the forthcoming Bihar elections. The projects are going to be a big employment initiator for Bihar.
The projects have been set under the private and public partnership model in which the Railways owe 26% and private developers control the remaining 76%. The proposals opened on Monday for the electric locomotive units for Rs. 20,000 crore, and it had 3 global engineering leaders, which are Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom.
The project has a fixed procurement of about 800 engine units by Indian Railways in the next upcoming ten years. The Rs. 22,000 crore bids for diesel locomotive units began on Tuesday.
It also involves a guaranteed offtake of about 1000 units over the upcoming decade. GE won from the 2nd bidder, which was the Electro-motive diesel. Many related to this project have said that global majors are noticing the growth of Indian transport.