World Bank loans for Indian Railways |
The World Bank has approved a $245 million loan to support Indias efforts to modernize rail freight and logistics infrastructure, the international financial institution said. The Rail Logistics project will help India shift more traffic from road to rail, making transport – both freight and passenger – more efficient and reducing millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) each year. The project will also incentivize more private sector investment in the railway sector. Indian Railways is the fourth-largest rail network in the world having transported 1.2 billion tonnes of freight in the fiscal ended March 2020. Yet, 71 percent of India`s freight is transported by road and only 17 percent by rail. The statement also said that the capacity constraints of Indian Railways have limited the volumes and reduced the speed and reliability of shipments. As a result, it has been losing market share to trucks over the years, in 2017-18, its market share was 32 percent, down from 52 percent a decade earlier. Road freight is the largest contributor to GHG emissions, accounting for about 95 percent of emissions in the freight sector. Trucks also accounted for about 12.3 percent of road accidents and 15.8 percent of total road transport-related deaths in 2018. Rail emits about one-fifth of trucks` GHG emissions, and with Indian Railways planning to become a net-zero carbon emitter by 2030, it has the potential to eliminate 7.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases each year, it added.
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