Union Railways Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu on Monday stressed on the requirement of huge investment in Railways. He said this in his first meeting of the newly-constituted Advisory Board on financial matters. He also drew attention on the need of investment in various other sources under consideration to mobilise the required resources.
Prabhu talked about the complex task of matching projects with varying levels of returns to various sources of finances, all available at various costs. During the discussion with members of the Advisory Board, many suggestions were made by members for attracting domestic and international funds, steps required to give comfort to investors/ lenders and to ensure sustainability of the funding models.
It’s worth mentioning that the minister had announced setting up of the board during the discussion on the Railway Budget in Parliament. The House was told that Board, consisting of big industry names, would guide and advise on matters of sourcing investments into railway infrastructure development. A Financial Services Cell has also been created in the ministry to focus on this aspect.
The meeting, chaired by Prabhu, was attended by MoS for Railways Manoj Sinha, Railway Board Chairman AK Mital, members of the Railway Board and other senior officers of the Ministry and MD, IRFC. The members of Advisory Committee include ICICI Bank chairman KV Kamath, SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya, executive chairman of IDFC Rajiv Lall and founder of The Quintillion Media Pvt Ltd Raghav <g data-gr-id="28">Bahal</g>.