New Delhi: The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICO), which is funding the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail or bullet train, has pointed out that it is unsure of when the project woill become operational.
JICA’s president Akihiko Tanaka, who is currently on a trip to India, said although early completion of the project is desirable, they cannot compromise on the safety aspect. “…Well, timeframe, the – well, personally, the faster the better. Japan has lots of high-speed rail projects and it is extremely difficult to tell exactly when the project will really complete, but, we would like to do it as quickly as possible, but we absolutely would need to make sure that the system works safely. Safety is the most important thing,” Tanaka told Economic Times exclusively.
The foundation stone for the project was laid in 2017, and only 30% of the project was completed by the end of January this year. The project is progressing with significant delays due to problems concerning land acquisition in Maharashtra, Times of India reported.
The project is expected to become operational in 2027, and the trial run is set to take place between Surat and Billimora in Gujarat in August 2026. JICA, which is an official wing of the Japanese government in contributing aid to developing countries, committed JPY 250,000 million or around Rs 18,000 crore in 2017 towards the project. The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train is JICA’s biggest project anywhere in the world in terms of valuation.
Tanaka also said JICA accords importance to its projects in the northeast, which connect with the deep sea port in Bangladesh. “…important areas of cooperation are our cooperation in North-Eastern states. There are projects of infrastructure. There are projects to preserve forest and so further development in north-eastern states, we consider it very important, and the infrastructures are very important because it is beneficial for the people in North-Eastern states, but it is also beneficial to the neighbouring countries too,” he told ET.
While underlining that JICA’s projects in the northeast would benefit Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, he said JICA is developing an “important project” to develop a deep seaport at Matarbari in Bangladesh. He said India’s northeastern states should be connected to the gateway to the ocean through Matarbari.
He also suggested India and Bangladesh to work towards making border controls easy for trade, and added that it would be a futile exercise to have good roads connecting the two countries without hassle-free border controls.
The JICA president called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, March 13. “I had a very good conversation with the PM about the necessity of people-to-people exchange. So far, it is rather slow and so I suggest that we should jointly work harder so that we could have more Indian students in Japan, and we could have more Japanese students in India. This human-to-human, people-to-people exchange is one area that I personally feel very important to pursue,” he said.
Tanaka’s visit to India comes days ahead of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s state visit to India on March 20-21.
