The Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC), the executing body of key suburban rail infrastructure projects in the city, will most likely sign an agreement with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in January 2020 for a loan of $500 million for a bouquet of projects under the Mumbai Urban Transport Project 3 (MUTP 3).
Sources in the Railways said negotiations had concluded and they aim to ink the deal in January, subject to certain conditions laid down by the multilateral funding agency. Chief among them is the land acquisition for two of the largest project under MUTP 3 — Virar-Dahanu Quadrupling and the new corridor between Karjat-Panvel.
Around 58 hectares of land needs to be acquired for the Virar-Dahanu project, which has a completion cost of ₹3,578 crore, while 33 hectares of land needs to be acquired for the Panvel-Karjat corridor which is expected to cost ₹2,782 crore.
“The land acquisition will pick up speed after the elections. The process of issuing cheques has started and the aim is to have the land parcels transferred to the railways before the agreement is signed,” an official from MRVC said.
He said they plan to acquire most of the land required for the two projects by December-end.
Besides the two projects, the loan, which is a little over ₹3,500 crore, will also be used for a project aimed to curb mid-section trespass. The contract for the project has been awarded and work is currently under way at various parts of the city. The 10,947 crore MUTP 3 also includes a new corridor between Airoli and Kalwa and procurement of 47 AC local trains. The latter is being executed by the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), which is finalising the design specifications of the trains.
In November last year, MRVC had initiated talks with several banks after negotiations with World Bank had reached an impasse over the funding of MUTP 3. The quantum of funding also reduced after the Railway Board decided to finance the procurement of the AC local trains from the Indian Rail Finance Corporation (IRFC), the finance arm of the Indian Railways.
According to sources, AIIB and the New Development Bank have also been selected for funding for suburban railway projects worth ₹33,690 crore under the MUTP 3A. The railways will be negotiating loans worth $500 million each with both the development banks.
