Indian Railways has 4.81 lakh hectares of land under its possession and accounts for 26% of the total NMP plan for the next four years
T P Venu
People visit malls and spend time, in the near future railway stations too could be in the bucket list said the former Railway Minister Piyush Goyal in 2018 when he visited the Secunderabad Railway Station. Monetisation of Railway properties has been on the cards for years now but has gained traction in the last few days; monetisation of Indian Railways assets is once again in the news as part of the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) launched on August 23 to unlock value in infrastructure assets. The Government of India (GoI) has been trying to monetise railway stations, railway colonies, goods sheds, locomotive workshops and large tracts of railway land in towns and cities across the country but without much success.
The process of monetisation of railway assets has been going on for several years, the railway station redevelopment, for instance is an ongoing one. Rs 17,810 crore is expected to be garnered by redeveloping 40 railway stations in FY22. In all, 400 railway stations are to be redeveloped.
With the NMP, the GoI seeks to renew its effort to leverage the efficiencies of the private sector and generate sustainable infrastructural funding by monetising brownfield infrastructural assets. The Indian Railways is one of the largest property owners in the country and accounts for one –fourth of the Rs 6 lakh crore of assets identified in NMP. It is expected for private operations in rail assets to generate close to Rs 1.5 lakh crore in FY 2022- FY 2025.
It is easier said than done as the Indian Railways failed in attracting a single private player to run trains and in several tenders calling for railway station redevelopment the response is far from satisfactory. The GoI is upbeat and is relying heavily on NMP to get private players to modernize railways. The railway assets identified include 400 railway stations, 90 passenger trains, 1,400 km railway track, 741 km of Konkan Railway, 15 railway stadiums, 84 railway colonies, 265 railway owned goods sheds and four hill railways.
The success of attracting private investments depends on concession agreements and the GoI in hopeful that this time around, it would attract investors that have been giving a wink all these years.