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The Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Ltd, or Maha-Metro, has clarified that a decision on sharing revenue from non-fare sources of Pune Metro with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) would have to be taken by the Maharashtra government and Centre, as the revenue is primarily meant to recover the project’s operational costs.
The clarification comes after the PMC standing committee recently passed a resolution to demand a share of revenue from non-fare sources on property leased to the Pune Metro project, which is being implemented by the Maha-Metro.
The Maha-Metro, in its response, pointed out that the Pune Metro project has been proposed by the PMC and the agency is executing it.
“The overall estimated project cost of Pune Metro project is Rs 11,420 crore, with equal participation from Union and state governments. A total of Rs 5,831.5 crore has been raised for the project through financial institutions. The PMC has put in investment worth Rs 951.6 crore in the project, mainly through funding, land and rehabilitation cost,” said Maha-Metro.
Non-fare sources, such as renting out space for commercial establishments, is expected to generate a considerable amount of revenue. The non-fare revenue model is widely used to make Metro services more economically feasible and operationally effective, and also to repay the loans taken to complete the project. It has been planned that 40 percent of the operational costs would come from the fare while the remaining amount would be raised from commercial establishments at Swargate.
The Centre and the state government will take a decision on how revenue from fares as well as non-fare sources will be utilised, said Maha-Metro. “At present, the focus is on the actual Metro rail project work and starting operations for the public…,” said the agency.
