The Indian government is likely to abandon its plan to build three more dedicated freight corridors (DFCs) – East Coast, East-West, and North-South – due to low capacity utilization of the existing east and west freight corridors. Instead, the government will focus on building commodity-specific rail networks, such as those for...
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energy, minerals, and cement, as announced in the recent budget. These commodity-specific corridors are expected to be more successful as there will be existing customers for them. The existing DFCs have faced challenges in attracting enough customers and have been hard-sold to potential bulk customers. The decision to focus on commodity-specific networks comes after the government received detailed project reports for the East Coast and North-South DFCs, and the DPR for the East-West DFC is expected soon. These new corridors were initially proposed in 2021 but were seen as a deviation from the previous plan to focus on generic DFCs.