Representatives of Agence Française de Dévelopement (AFD) from whom a loan is expected for Kochi metro, visited the Aluva-Pettah alignment of the project and sites for stations en route on Thursday.
Second visit
A team from the French financial agency also attended presentations on the project and the financial aspects, at the Kochi Metro Rail Limited’s (KMRL) office.
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This visit follows the one in March wherein two of its officials inspected the alignment as part of a pre-appraisal mission.
As per plan, Rs.2,170 crore (about 42 per cent of the total project cost of Rs.5,182 crore) is expected to be raised as loan.
The rest of the cost will be shared by the State and Central governments.
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The AFD representatives who inspected the alignment included Xavier Hoang, senior transport expert; Aude Flogny, regional director for South Asia; and Gautier Kohler, project coordinator.
The meeting was attended by among others E. Sreedharan, Principal Advisor of DMRC.
With a loan from Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) at 1.4 per cent interest expected to take up to a year to materialise, moves are afoot to obtain at least 50 per cent of the loan from AFD which generally charges an interest of 2 per cent.
The AFD loan has a repayment tenure of 20 years and comes with a moratorium of nine years. JICA extends a 30-year repayment tenure.
AFD is the main implementing agency for France’s official development assistance to developing countries and overseas territories.
During their earlier visit, the French team has sought additional data on the metro’s environment impact and traffic details, to ascertain the project’s sustainability.
Detailed site visit
On Friday, the visiting team would hold interactive sessions with KMRL officials and the consultants of the project. They would again do a detailed site visit on Saturday.