₹16 trn investment plan for high speed trains on track: Ashwini Vaishnaw

He said the commissioning of the Mumbai Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Corridor will reduce travel time between the two cities to 1 hour and 57 minutes. “With the new corridors, Mumbai to Pune travel time will come down to 48 minutes and travelling from Pune to Hyderabad will be possible in only 1 hour and 55 minutes,” Vaishnaw said. He shared with the audience the reduced travel time across all segments of the new high-speed corridors. “This will be an investment of ₹16 trillion, and practically the entire investment will be for Indian manufacturers and Indian construction firms because we have now standardised the entire design and construction work,” the minister said.     Against the backdrop of global geopolitical uncertainty and continuing conflicts, Vaishnaw urged industry to respond to the Prime Minister’s latest clarion call by reducing expenditure that leads to foreign exchange outflow while simultaneously increasing efforts to earn foreign exchange and strengthen reserves.

Highlighting the scale of transformation in the railways sector, he said Indian Railways’ annual capital expenditure has increased from around ₹66,000 crore a few years ago to nearly ₹272,000 crore in the last financial year.      He said around 49,000 km of railway tracks have been electrified, equivalent to the entire railway network of Germany, and the production of wagons and locomotives has also been boosted by the government.

The minister also announced the completion of the Dedicated Freight Corridor project on April 5, despite multiple implementation challenges. He said the Dedicated Freight Corridor is currently enabling the movement of nearly 480 trains a day, while reducing transit time between the hinterland and ports from 48 hours to nearly 12–16 hours.  Vaishnaw also said the rail ministry has addressed the earlier issue of shortage of wagons for coal transport and coal stocks at the country’s power plants have now risen to 54 million tonnes.   Painting a modern and transformed image of the national transporter, the minister said Indian Railways is now exporting propulsion systems, the core equipment supporting train operations, to many developed nations, including the United States, Germany and France.