Mumbai- Hyderabad high speed trains discussed at Tokyo meet

Daisy

Patna : In an effort to give an impetus to the high speed trains,  the second meeting of high level Joint Committee on Mumbai- Ahmedabad high speed rail project was  held  on May 16 in Tokyo, Japan. The Indian delegation was  led by Dr Arvind Panagariya, Vice Chairman, NITI, Aayog. The other members of the team include A K Mital, Chairman, Railway Board, Shaktikanta Das, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs,  Jaishankar , Foreign Secretary and  Ramesh Abhishek, Secretary , Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion.

The Japanese side was led by Hiroto Izumi, Special Adviser to the  prime minister of Japan while  other members from Japanese side  include senior officials from Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and  Tourism (MLIT), Government of Japan, and senior officials from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The meeting  of the Joint Committee was held to finalize the schedule of project, terms related to the appointment of General Consultant and procurement conditions. Since the loan negotiation and finalization of loan agreement will take  time,  the Government of India has  requested for a proper schedule of project implementation . It  has also requested for appointment of General Consultant before the finalization of loan agreement, sources said adding the appointment of General Consultant will enable start of preparatory activities like designing and preparation of tender documents.

Keeping in view  the fact that ‘ Make in India and Transfer of Technology’  are key components of the project implementation,  an industry interaction between Indian and Japanese companies is scheduled for May 17 ,  2016.   About  100 Japanese companies and 21 Indian companies will participate at the meeting. The industry interaction will enable Indian companies to explore business opportunities in collaboration with Japanese companies. Some of the Indian companies include  BHEL, BEML, IRCON, Reliance Metro, Tata Infrastructure, JBM, Patil Infrastructure, IL&FS, Hindustan Construction Company, Texmaco Rail among others to  part   in the discussion , sources said .