Praveen Kumar, the newly appointed managing director of Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd, has emphasized the need for the Ministry of Railways’ enterprise to focus on the development of Gati Shakti Cargo Terminals in order to drive the company’s business development.
Kumar recently took over the helm from Ravindra Kumar Jain, who superannuated on July 31.
“All avenues of earning more freight revenue must be examined. Business development shall be our priority. We must engage in expanding our business potential and in this direction extensively and explore all means to further develop Gati Shakti Cargo Terminals,” said Kumar in a statement after taking over as managing director.
As per the ‘Gati Shakti Multimodal Cargo Terminal Policy’ launched in December 2021, the government is aiming to set up 100 such terminals by the end of 2024-25 and DFCCIL has been rolling out tenders for the development of such terminals both on private land as well
as alongside both western and eastern dedicated freight corridors.
The development of the terminals are open to logistics services providers, real estate developers, third party logistics players, warehousing investors, container train operators, manufacturers and salient features include simplified application and approval process, enabling private as well state-owned operators to set up common user facilities or terminals for handling rail cargo, relaxation in land license fee, among others.
The policy for the development of these terminals was unveiled to accelerate the growth of railways’ cargo traffic.
While the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor has been operationalised on its entire route, the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor is very close to completion.
“With more than 96% of the project being commissioned, DFCCIL has made transition into operation and maintenance phase which is evinced by the fact that DFCCIL is showing average daily seamless exchange of more than 700 full length goods trains,” said Kumar.
Kumar highlighted that DFCCIL is now efficiently executing the operations of longer, heavier and faster trains which are in the same standard as acknowledged world class heavy haul railways and called upon the organisation for enhancing Artificial Intelligence based
operation maintenance systems for greater efficiency.
