Railways to chugh along the retail track

The Railways are getting ready to get onto the retail track. The Rail Ministry is likely to lease free land to retail giants like Reliance, Bharti, and the Birlas to set up retail networks and logistic parks reports CNBC-TV18.

Land-hungry retailers like Reliance, ITC, HLL, Bharti and Pantaloon are ready to collaborate with the Railways to build their retail network across the country. The Rail Ministry has held meetings with most of the major retail players to give details of the 43,000 hectares of free land where the retail networks can be set up.

Private players are expected to share their plans with the Railways shortly. Not just retail outlets, the Railways are also looking at giving land to set up retail infrastructure. The idea is to build at least four big multi-modal parks across four different parts of the country.

Each park will need an investment of up to Rs 5000 crore. Cities on the radar are Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. There will be three supply chains -local, regional and inter-regional. Companies will have about 16 regional hubs, 360 sub-regional hubs and 7000 spokes in the country. The Railways is working closely with private container operators to make double-stack containers and wagons, which are compatible with international standards.

The model policy framework is being prepared, where private players will be given railway land via competitive bidding process and the company that promises to get the maximum traffic and revenue to the Railways will get the land. Private companies will need to pump in at least Rs 20,000-30,000 crore to set up ware-housing, cold storage, and multi-modal logistic parks. More clarity is expected in the coming railway budget.

Source : MoneyControl