Railways working on adopting NH model of development

NEW DELHI: Indian Railways is currently working on several proposals on adopting the NH model of development to bring private investment in track-laying and redevelopment of stations.
These projects would be executed on the public-private-partnership (PPP) model, similar to the hybrid annuity model (HAM) in the national highway (NH) sector where the government pays a share of the project cost during the construction period and the remaining is disbursed to the developers in installments spread over years. The NHAI has been bidding out highway projects on the HAM mode.
At the recent Times Now Summit, railway minister Ashwani Vaishnaw had said the railways now needed to bring private investment the manner in which India’s highways sector opened up from purely government funding to a public-private partnership. He had said his ministry is working on the process of bidding out the first BOT (build-operate-transfer) project for laying new railway lines.