India, Switzerland sign two MoUs for cooperation in Railways

31 August, New Delhi

India and Switzerland today signed two agreements for technical cooperation in the Railway sector.The agreements were signed after talks between President of the Swiss Confederation, Doris Leuthard and Prime Minister Narendra Modi here.

The first Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was between Railway Ministry and Federal Department of the Environment, Transport and Communications of the Swiss Confederation for technical cooperation in Rail Sector.

The MoU was signed by Chairman Railway Board Ashwani Lohani and Swiss Ambassador to India Dr Andreas Baum.The MoU was a follow up on bilateral cooperation in Rail sector discussed in the meeting held between Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu and Swiss Ambassador in July 2016.

The MoU aims at cooperation in the areas of traction rolling stock, EMU and train sets, traction propulsion equipment, freight and passenger cars, tilting trains, railway electrification equipment, train scheduling and operation improvement, station modernization, multimodal transport and tunneling technology.

The second agreement was between Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL) and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and was signed by CMD/KRCL Sanjay Gupta and Prof Sarah Springman, Rector, ETH Zurich.

This will help Konkan Railway in establishing the George Fernandes Institute of Tunnel Technology (GFITT) at Goa especially for assimilation and dissemination of knowledge in the field of tunneling. GFITT aims to not only train KRCL’s own manpower for its tunneling projects but also wishes to generate qualified and trained personnel for the benefit of other government organisations, private sector and even foreign organisations to bridge the huge gap in levels of knowledge and qualified manpower required to meet the key segment of infrastructure development in India.