RailEnquiry

NEW DELHI: The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation (DFCC) has awarded its first contract for the Western freight corridor worth Rs 6700 crore to the consortium led by Japanese company Sojitz. The contract is for the 640-km project between Rewari and Palanpur which is part of the first phase spanning 920-km from Rewari to Vadodara.

Two consortia - Larsen & Toubro and Sojitz Corporation of Japan and Mitsui, Ircon, and Leighton Contractors - had qualified after the technical bidding round. DFCC officials had earlier confirmed to ET that the corporation was evaluating the financial bids received and would be ready to award the project early June. According to DFCC, the length covered under this contract is more than 40% of the entire western corridor.

Almost all land required for the stretch has already been acquired and all the other statutory clearances have also been obtained. This contract is likely to be completed in four years.

This contract comes about four months after DFCC had awarded its first project worth Rs 3,300-km along the 343-km Khurja-Kanpur section of Eastern freight corridor to the Tata-Aldesa joint venture. The Eastern freight corridor, which will run from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal and around which the new corridor is based, is being built in four sections.

Of this, the Mughal Sarai to Sonnagar stretch will be built by the railway ministry. The Dankuni to Sonnagar stretch will be built through the Public Private Partnership mode and three other stretches are being funded by the World Bank.

The Western Corridor, which will run from Dadri to Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT), will be built in three phases and is being funded entirely by the Japenese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The first tranche of the soft loan by JICA for Rs 4500 crore has already been signed. Funding of about Rs 11,500 crore for the second phase that will run connect Vadodara and JNPT is currently being negotiated.

The government plans to invite bids for about 1,500 km of freight corridor lines by the end of this fiscal, most of which will be in the western corridor. "Of the 1,500 km, 950-1,000 km will be from the western corridor while 400 km will be from the eastern corridor," DFCC's MD, RK Gupta had told ET in April.