The Indian Railways has exceeded its initial target of commissioning 100 Gati Shakti Multimodal Cargo Terminals by the end of financial year 2024-25 (April-March), indicating that the cargo infrastructure programme of the government is getting traction.
“So far, 112 Gati Shakti Multi-Modal Cargo Terminals (GCTs) have been commissioned against target of 100 GCTs,” Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in a written reply to Member of Parliament Rajiv Pratap Rudy in the Lok Sabha last week.
As per the ‘Gati Shakti Multimodal Cargo Terminal Policy’ launched in December 2021, the government’s aim was to set up 100 such terminals by the end of 2024-25 (April-March). The cargo terminal infrastructure buildup along India’s rail infrastructure has been initiated to give a boost to investment from industry in development of additional terminals and increase the railways share in cargo handling.
The minister further stated that a total of 301.7 million tonnes of cargo traffic has been handled at these cargo terminals since their commissioning.
“The major commodities handled at commissioned GCTs are coal, container, foodgrain, fertilisers, cement, crane consignment, petroleum and automobiles, etc.” the minister stated.
The government has been rolling out tenders for the development of Gati Shakti Multimodal Cargo Terminals both on private land as well as on land alongside both western and eastern dedicated freight corridors. Under schedule 1, tenders are invited for development of private terminals (on private land) and under schedule 2, for the development of terminals under Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India or railway land.
The development of the terminals are open to logistics services providers, real estate developers, third party logistics players, warehousing investors, container train operators, manufacturers.
The 2021 policy introduced several new measures, including simplified application and approval process, provisions enabling private as well as stateowned operators to set up common user facilities or terminals for handling rail cargo, relaxation in land license fee, among others.