The Konkan Railway Corporation (KRC) in India is fast shedding it’s image of a rail service provider and converting itself into a construction company claiming to be on a par with or above many other private sector players in the country.
KRC is lending its expertise to the construction of road, railway tracks, metro sky-bus, bridges and tunnels, and believes profits from these ‘non-traditional sources’ would soon surpass its revenues from railway operations, currently around an annual $30.3M.
B Rajaram, managing director of KRC said, "KRC has a separate project division exploring all these avenues. The whole idea is to provide quality infrastructure services at affordable prices to whoever seeks it."
KRC has now submitted a feasibility study to Border Road Organisation under the defence ministry for constructing the sensitive Rohtang Tunnel on the Sri Nagar-Leh highway. KRC quoted around $106M for the project which was the lowest bid; the second lowest was over US$213M. KRC has already completed construction of 10 tunnels on the new Mumbai-Pune highway, and started on the eleventh one. Lighting and ventilation work for another tunnel, the Jawahar road tunnel on the Jammu-Sri Nagar highway, is also completed.
