Andhra to put up proposals for liberal funding from Centre for metro projects

Vijayawada: Faced with severe cash crunch and heavy debt liability, the TDP-led NDA government in Andhra Pradesh has decided to place before the Centre the revised reports on taking up work on metro rail projects for Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada and seek liberal funding from the government of India as the big ticket projects are part of AP Bifurcation Act, 2014. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who wields a lot of influence on the Centre following the landslide victory in the May general elections and the dependence for his support for the BJP-led NDA coalition led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is keen that the Centre should give highest possible funding for the metro rail projects.

Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development P Narayana after a review meeting held by the Chief Minister said they will be needing four years or so with massive investment for each metro rail project for fully commissioning in Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada on a fast-track mode.

The YSRCP government, which prepared the revised detailed project report, just before the elections for Visakhapatnam, had urged the Centre to absorb both the State government and its share of 20 per cent each and raise the remaining from private developers under the Public Private Participation (PPP) route.

The Congress government in Telangana led by Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy is contemplating taking up second phase of Hyderabad Metro Rail as a joint venture with the Centre and to meet most of the funds required for second phase work through soft loans from multilateral agencies like Asian Development Bank and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

At the review meeting, Naidu directed officials to take up the metro rail works in Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada at a fast pace. Managing Director of the AP Metro Rail Project Ramakrishna Reddy, who was appointed by the three-party coalition sometime ago, told Naidu that the Visakhapatnam metro rail works will be completed in two phases, the first phase of 46 km with Rs11,400 crore expenditure and the second phase of 30 km with Rs 5,734 crore.

According to official sources, the Chief Minister said that the first phase works in Visakhapatnam should be completed in the next four years and in Vijayawada the metro rail works to be taken up with Rs 11,000 crore for an extent of 38 km. The Visakhapatnam project will have corridors from Kurmannapalem to Kommadi in the first phase and Kommadi to Gambheeram in the second phase. A greenfield international airport is being developed under the DBFOT basis with the involvement of GMR Group. The first phase work will cost around Rs 5,000 crore. The Vijayawada project will have metro connectivity in the city areas in the first phase. Later on from the Gannavaram Airport to Amaravati the second phase work will be taken up. The Chief Minister has already directed the officials to build Amaravati as an artificial intelligence (AI) city by accelerating the completion of pending buildings including the administrative block of Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) at the earliest.