In a bid to help the Indian Railways to meet its acute funding crunch, Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has decided to invest a staggering sum worth Rs 1.5 lakh-cr in the country's rail sector. In this connection, the fund rich insurer has recently inked MoU with the railway minister to finance its various projects across the country and the repayment will happen only after 30 years. It may be recalled that the minister in his rail budget last month had talked about railways focusing on extra budgetary support to get financial resources for completing pending and new projects.

Lauding the LIC commitment, the minister said that this is the new paradigm shift in the Railways that would fulfill the aspirations of a large number of populations of India by finding out resources, not just increasing the fares on the passengers or only increasing the tariff or relying on the gross budgetary support but also going beyond that. In his statement, he called it as the first such step in its endeavour to make Indian Railways prosperous in the future as more money will be generated in the near future so that the ministry is able to augment its resources for speedier execution of infra projects.