The railways have made a slew of changes in its model contract document for private players to redevelop railway stations, bringing down the concession period from the earlier 60 years to 35-40 years. In general, concession period is the span of time granted by the government to the private sector within which the private sector is responsible for the financing, construction and operation of a BOT (build, operate and transfer) project.
The new draft Model Concession Agreement (MCA) prepared by the Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA) has also made provision of single and well-defined payout which can be easily monitored with no upfront cashflow burden for the private entities.
