Rlys seeks to develop common user terminals for auto, ancillary hub

The Railway Ministry has invited firms to invest in developing common user terminals for automobile and ancillary hub.

The Railways will provide land on lease initially for seven years and the lease can be extended every year, thereafter.

The lease charges will be according to the Ministry policy on land.

Railways is not charging any extra fee to the user.

To be eligible as a common terminal operator, the Railways stated, “The company has to be a manufacturer of automobile or logistics company; or Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) or registered freight train operator having an annual turnover of Rs 20 crore during last financial year.”

Automobile and ancillary hubs shall be a common user facility for general use of the automobile industry, without any exclusive right.

The objective of the policy on development of automobile and ancillary hub is to increase the modal share of Railways in transportation of automobiles.

Development of automobile and ancillary hubs will provide an opportunity to automobile manufacturers to carry their traffic by rail in bulk and do secondary distribution to consuming centres in the immediate catchments areas from such hubs, said an official statement.

Similarly they can also do aggregation of automobile at such hubs so as to offer full rake load to railways.

This will improve rail co-efficient of the commodity.

Source: indiacar.com Source : Business Line (Online Edition) (6/24/2010)