Engineering Post Report
Pakistan Railways was in the process of procuring/ manufacturing 1050 high capacity wagons and passenger coaches from the Chinese firms for the last about seven years.
Against 820 high capacity wagons and 230 passenger coaches Railways have so far received 392 freight wagons and 78 passenger coaches under contract with the Chinese firms while the remaining units were scheduled to be delivered by June 30, 2026.
The major wagons and coaches procurement project was approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) at an estimated cost of Rs 31194.000 million involving no foreign aid in November 2017. Since then, Rs 375. 61 million had been expended till end June 2024 and against negative throw forward of Rs 6367.581 million at the start of new financial year 2024-25, Rs 6167.000 million have been allocated for this major project in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) 2024-25 sans foreign aid.
The contracts were awarded to two Chinese firms Baotou Heifing Chuangye for $ 41.64 million and CRRC Tangshan Co for supplying freight wagons and passenger bogies respectively.
Pakistan Railways are now contesting for a hefty increase of as much as 130 percent with the Federal Ministry and the Planning Commission who have in turn have pointed out gross faults with the Railways working and implementation of its development project which suffer from time and cost escalation in which may be mentioned later on, please.
