The Ministry of Railways has decided to create a special cell in the Railway Board to increase investments and inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI).
An order issued by the railway ministry on Tuesday (21st July 2020) said, “It has been decided to create a Project Development Cell (PDC) in the Board’s Office for identifying and facilitating the development of investible projects in India, to increase investments/Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows.”
The broad items of work to be handled by the PDC would be to create projects with all approvals, land available for allocation and with the complete Detailed Project Reports (DPR) for investment by interested investors.
In addition, the PDC would identify issues that need to be resolved in order to attract and finalise the investment and put forth these to the Empowered Group of Secretaries.
The PDC would be headed by the principal executive director of the infrastructure department, and its members would be the executive directors from the departments of works, planning, electrification, signal, etc.
The formation of the PDC comes just weeks after the Railways announced the formation of business development units across all its zones to boost revenue and business.