Vijayawada: Even when Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, in his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, called for more quickly completing the Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam metro rail projects, the Union budget did not mention the projects, to great disappointment. of the state government. With this, Amaravati Metro Rail Corporation (AMRC) is contemplating opting for Public Private Partnership (PPP), to execute the Vijayawada subway project.
“Given that there has been no guarantee regarding the funding of the projects, we will examine whether we can move forward with the PPP model for the Vijayawada metro,” said NPIE MD NP Ramakrishna Reddy. The PPP model is being used for the implementation of the Visakhapatnam metro. The association with private players will help a faster execution of the project, since the officials do not need to wait for the funds of the government of the Union.
While the Union government had provisionally allocated Rs 100 crore in the two previous budgets, it did not make allocations in the 2018-19 disbursement since the projects have not yet received a green signal from the Union Ministry of Finance. For the record, the state government had sent the detailed report of the project of a metro project in Vijayawada, with an estimated cost of Rs 7,200 crore, about two years ago. However, the project was rejected in March 2017 by the Public Investment Board, which said that the project was not viable from a financial point of view. He asked the state government to send a new proposal according to the metro’s new rail policy.
CM Naidu, in the last quarter of 2017, decided to move forward with a light rail project. Consequently, the AMRC, in January, selected the French company Systra Group for the preparation of the Detailed Project Report (DPR). An agreement between Systra Group and AMRC will be signed next week and the DPR will be ready within six months.
However, what most disappointed state officials was the fact that the budget proposed the allocation of Rs 17,000 crore for a suburban transport system in Bangalore and Rs 40,000 crore for another in Mumbai. “The government of the Union can say that we do not send any proposal now, but even when we did it before everything we got was an insignificant Rs 100 crore,” noted a senior official.
What they got, but we did not do it for others-
The budget proposes a disbursement of J15,000 million for several works related to the extension of the metro rail project in Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Nagpur and Greater Noida.
Approximately 190 km of the metro rail network is proposed to the public during 2018-1919.
Delhi metro- 114 km, Chennai metro: 15.5 km, Bangalore metro: 12.80 km, Ahmedabad metro: 6.3 km, Nagpur metro: 11.7 km and Gran Noida: 29.70 km.
Despite the State’s call to the Union government to complete the Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam metro rail projects more quickly, the Union Budget made no mention of these.
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said: The Mumbai transportation system will be expanded to add 90 km of double-lane roads at a cost of more than J11,000 crore
150 kms of additional suburban network are planned in Mumbai at a cost of more than J40,000 crore. A suburban network is being planned at a cost of J17,000 for Bangalore.
