Railways to come out with draft policy on retail trade by month-en

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

New Delhi, Jan 10 (UNI) Keen to join the bandwagon of booming retail trade, the Railways will come out with a draft policy by the month-end with the objective of expanding its portfolio of products for freight operations.

A top Railway Ministry official said preliminary talks were held today with a number of companies, including the Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance, ITC, Pantaloon, Cargill India, Adani Enterprise, Godrej Agovet and Fieldfresh, for giving a concrete shape to the policy of ''supply chain management infrastructure development'', primarily for agri products, but also for non-agricultural commodities.

''The Railway Board will come out with the draft policy within four-five weeks and put it on its web site. Another such meeting will be held next month to flesh out the policy,'' he said.

As part of the policy to be based on a revenue-sharing model, the Railways will offer land to companies for developing national transport hubs having front-end and back-end facilities, which would, in turn, be integrated with the rail network.

The front-end facilities include development of malls, shopping plazas and colection and distribution centre while back-end facilities will comprise warehouses, cold storage chain, processing centres and grading facilities.

''We made it amply clear to the represenatives of the companies that the Railways is not a property dealer. Its mandae is to transport goods and passengers. Consequently, the land at its disposal must be used for freight operations,'' the official said.

Elaborating, he said the Railways would expect companies to set up four to 16 national hubs, a few dozen regional hubs and hundreds of spokes of these regional hubs, and it would provide land for these facilities on a long-term basis of 30-50 years.

A national hub would require around 100 acres of land, regional hubs 10-20 acres each and a few thousand sq feet for village hubs.

In return, the railway would provide a cost-effective and efficient transport solution for carrying goods and produtcs.

''It will be a win-win situation for all the stake-holders. It will help the Railways to diversify its products portfolio and thereby sustain its double-digit growth momentum while the companies will reap enormous benefits from the retail trade through an efficient transport linkage between regional and national hubs,'' the official pointed out.

It was pointed out at the meeting that creation of physical infrastructure at the national hubs by companies at a cost of Rs 200-500 crore would give a lot of confidence to the Railways in steaming ahead with its retail business scheme.

''We would give preference to those who have already been granted licences for running container trains. But even the companies like ITC and Pantaloon, which are not in container train operations, can join the fray by entering into agreements with those companies which are already doing it,'' he pointed out.

As part of the plan, the Railways has organised an open house session on January 16 for container train operators and shipping companies to further discuss the matter.

''The Railways has set a target of 730 million tonnes of freight traffic by the next year. At present, a major chunk of rail freight trade is accounted for by coal and cement. We will have to expand the portfolio of products for freight operations if this target is to be achieved,'' he said.

UNI

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