India seeks Chinese aid in building high-speed rail corridor
November 25, 2014, 10:52 am

A train enters a railway station in Mumbai, India, June 26, 2014. Mumbai’s rail network carries up to 7.24 million passengers per day [Xinhua]

Indian railways officials arrived in Beijing on Monday and are in talks with China’s High Speed Rail Corp to build the Delhi-Chennai corridor which will see trains running at 300 km/h.

Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to India in September, said Beijing would pay the costs of the feasibility study.

The proposed corridor could be the second largest in the world after China’s 2,298 km-long Beijing-Guangzhou line which was launched last year. Running at a speed of 300 km per hour, it covers the distance in about eight hours.

The Delhi-Chennai high speed line could cost around $32.6 billion, state-run China Daily quoted Chinese officials as saying.

India’s state-owned railways are the fourth-largest in the world. The railways cost the Indian government around $5 billion a year in subsidies.

Under a bilateral agreement, China has agreed to provide training in heavy haul for 100 Indian Railways officials, redevelopment of existing railway stations and establishment of a railway university in India.

Indian Prime Minister in July had promised to seek foreign and private funding for the Indian railways.

Indian railways have suffered from years of low investment and populist policies that have kept fares low.

China and India have also agreed to cooperate to identify the technical inputs required to increase speed on the existing railway line between the southern Indian cities of Chennai, Mysore and Bangalore.

China and another BRICS member Brazil are also eyeing further cooperation in railway projects to aid the Latin American nation in extensive infrastructure improvements, needed to increase its productivity.

Peru, Brazil and China are also eyeing a planned railway crisscrossing the South American continent.

Amongst the deals inked in July this year between Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her Chinese counterpart Xi was, most significantly, a railway spanning the continent from Brazil’s Atlantic coast to Peru’s pacific ports, which woud significantly reduce the costs and time required for Brazil to ship raw commodities to China.

TBP and Agencies