Modern Coach Factory (MCF), Raebareli will now export customized 1st AC, 2nd AC and other coaches in the global market. This is the first time in India that MCF will export 90 coaches from Indian Railways’ manufacturing facility at Raebareli to the African nation, Mozambique. MCF, Raebareli is one of three coach manufacturing facilities of Indian Railways with the other two being Rail Coach Factory, Kapurthala and Integral Coach Factory, Chennai. The coaches will be rolled out in three batches with 30 in each batch. “We are finalizing the details of the design, then tenders will be floated and work will start,” said an official from Railways. The factory expects to complete the order by March 2020.
Indian Railways officials have noted the specifications of the order from the team of officials of Mozambique which recently visited MCF, Raebareli. “We will use the same platform as the one for Indian Railways but there will be changes in the gauge and the length, so an entirely new design will be prepared for these world-class coaches,” said RP Sharma, CPRO of MCF.
The Modern Coach Factory, Raebareli was announced way back in 2007 to develop the Gandhi family’s political bastion. However, The Rae Bareli coach factory started production only in 2014 under the NDA rule while it had been functional since 2007 under the UPA regime. Railway Minister, Piyush Goyal pointed out that the Raebareli coach factory which came under the Amethi constituency had been unproductive till 2013. In 2014, it took a thrust from the BJP government to make the factory productive. In 2017 alone, the factory had produced 700 coaches while it is projected to produce 1500 coaches by the end of this year and the next year’s goal is to produce 3,000 coaches in the factory.
MCF has increased production exponentially to 368 coaches in first 4 months of 2018-19, which is almost equal to the sum total of coaches manufactured in first 4 months of last 4 years (i.e. in 16 months) and approximately double the number of coaches manufactured in the same period of last year. MCF uses modern Robotics technology to manufacture coaches. The Modi government sanctioned 480 crore rupees in 2018-2019 budget to further modernize the rail coach factory at Raebareli and increase its production capacity from 1,000 to 3,000 per year. The railways plans to manufacture of Train 18 even at MCF and transfer of technology from ICF could happen very soon. This will scale up the manufacturing of rolling stock coaches used in Train 18. In future railways plan to use these coaches in every express and superfast train.
India is all set to enter the 200 billion dollar global market for coaches and wagons with the ultra-modern Train 18. Many countries like Peru, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and some Middle Eastern nations have shown interest in Train 18 and India is looking to export them. The interest of the countries is due to the cheap price and state of art technology in Train 18 coaches. The train sets with facilities of Train 18 are priced around 250 crore rupees while the cost of Train 18 is just 100 crore rupees and as such it is a great opportunity for India to export the trains.
The world has surely taken notice of the conducive investment environment in India. World’s biggest tech giants and entrepreneurs have already made their expansion plans in India. Investors around the world have shown immense confidence in India which will be helpful in meeting the needs of the Indian economy and hence, employment generation in India will see the boost. The onus of success largely goes to initiatives like the Make in India, Digital India and Skill India by the NDA government.