The railways expects incremental revenue of at least Rs 30,000 crore per annum from freight services once 300 Gati Shakti cargo terminals are operational in the next five years following the approval of long-term leasing of railway land.

Briefing reporters on the cabinet decisions, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the ministry has received a very good response after the launch of the ‘Gati Shakti Multi-Modal Cargo Terminal’ policy in December last year.

The approved policy will help provide land leases for a longer period of up to 35 years as against five years at present. It is expected to generate about 1.25 lakh jobs.

“The target of 300 terminals is a very achievable target. We already have 150 firm proposals — about 93 applications have been received to build terminals and about 65 entities have expressed their interest,” the minister said.

Officials said about 100 such terminals, including six in Bengal, will be operational by FY2025. Different zones of railways have been coming up with tenders for these schemes.

Eastern Railway has floated a tender for the Development of Gati Shakti Multi-Modal Cargo terminal over the Howrah Division.

The project location is Howrah and the tender closed in early July.

The licence fee on railway land was seen as one of the significant roadblocks to the strategic sale of the Container Corporation of India and the cut in the fee to 1.5 per cent from 6 per cent for certain usage would make it attractive for the investors.