The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Rs. 80-crore target for rolling stock, spares export

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Nov 13, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Rs. 80-crore target for rolling stock, spares export

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUCHI, NOV. 12. The Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES) Limited, a government enterprise functioning under the Railway Ministry, has set a Rs. 80-crore target for export of rolling stock and other spares this financial year, the Executive Director, J.S. Marwah, said on Wednesday.

Addressing a press conference at the Goldenrock Railway Workshop here, he said export of the rolling stock during the previous financial year was to the tune of Rs. 71 crores. Pointing out that the rolling stock was being exported through RITES, he said the organisation exported 65 locomotives to Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Tanzania and Bangladesh.

Strategy for growth

To keep pace in the competitive environment, the RITES devised a strategy and took efforts to grow at 10 per cent every year, he said.

The manufacture and export of locomotives for overseas markets enabled the Railways to learn a lot in the last 15 years especially in designing.

The engineers were designing track overhead equipment besides locomotives. Apart from manufacturing metre gauge locomotives for export, the RITES produced cape gauge locomotives and standard gauge locomotives.

Mr. Marwah said the workshop modified four "in-service" metre gauge locomotives as cape gauge locomotives for the Sudan Railway Corporation. Three new cape gauge locomotives for Sudan would be manufactured at the Varanasi Diesel Locomotive Works before the end of the current financial year. He said two service engineers and a driving instructor from the workshop would leave for Sudan to commission locomotives there.Earlier, four refurbished cape gauge locomotives were despatched to Sudan at a function held at the workshop.

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