GE, Alstom land $5.6-billion deals to supply Indian Railways.

General Electric and Alstom have won contracts worth a combined $5.6 billion to supply Indian Railways with new locomotives, as the vast but dilapidated state-owned network looks to foreign companies to help it modernise.

France's Alstom has been picked to supply 800 electric locomotives and will also build a factory in Bihar, railways spokesman Anil Saxena told Reuters recently. The total value of the contract and the new factory is about $3 billion, he said.

GE will meanwhile provide the railways with 1,000 diesel locomotives over the next 11 years, as well as investing $200 million in a plant and maintenance sheds, in a deal worth $2.6 billion that is the US company's biggest in India.

The contracts are two of the first and the largest to be awarded to foreign firms since India last year allowed 100 per cent foreign direct investment in certain parts of its railways, and comes as New Delhi embarks on a huge modernisation programme to overhaul the world's fourth-largest train network.

'In most of our growth markets, localisation is typically a key part of any infrastructure deal we do,' Jamie Miller, chief executive officer of GE Transportation, told Reuters on Monday.

GE and Alstom won against competition from rival manufacturers such as Canada's Bombardier Inc and Germany's Siemens.

Keen to upgrade the country's creaking infrastructure, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has said it will invest $137 billion on its railways by 2020.

TOI