Southern Railway invites vendors to supply signaling cables and 50 other items

COIMBATORE: Southern Railway has invited vendors for supplying signaling cables as well as people who can manufacture the product to register as a vendor. It also released a list of more than 50 other items for which it is looking for vendors.
Speaking to representatives of medium, small and micro industries from Coimbatore and Tirupur districts at a vendor development meeting in the city on Thursday, principal chief materials manager of Southern Railway K Shamugaraja said, “Our vendors are not able to meet our demand for signalling cables. And we don’t have vendors in south India.”
Officials said Southern Railway alone buys Rs 50,000 crore worth of material, and if track maintenance materials are included, it goes upto Rs 1 lakh crore. “Most of our vendors are only from north and east India,” divisional railway manager of Salem division U Subbarao said. “We need new vendors because the railways is coming up with a lot of new designs and technology in the fields of signalling and coaches. We need more vendors to supply rubber and polymer components. We are still importing shock absorbers and breakpads, for which we would be grateful for a local vendor. We want to create a large vendors base so that the quality of materials improves and our cost comes down,” he said.
The requirement was growing every year, and we request vendors to pick up and manufacture a range of new items, officials said. “For example, from conventional locomotives, we are fully moving towards Linke Hofmann Busch passenger coaches. And we have been trying to increase our capacity from manufacturing 4,000 coaches to 6,000 coaches. The railways minister wants to us manufacture 12,000 coaches soon. So, it’s a quantum jump in our requirement of materials,” Subbarao said.
The railways distributed a book which had a list of more than 50 items that it is looking to procure. The prices which the railways is willing to pay are mentioned in it. “We have already conducted vendors meet at nine locations and plan to conduct it at 15 more locations. Vendors can register themselves on the e-portal created for the same,” Shrivastava, a railway board member, said.
Speaking at the event, CODISSIA president R Ramamurthy suggested exempting MSME industries from paying the security deposit when taking a tender as most of them cannot afford it. “We request the registration to be made through a single window system. Also the rule that a prototype has to be approved by the research designs and standards organization makes it difficult for micro industries as it is too expensive,” he said.
More than 100 vendors attended the programme, organized along with Integral Coach Factory, NSIC and CODISSIA, and registered themselves.