Prime Minister Modi with PM Shinzo Abe in front of a Shinkansen bullet train

India will buy 18 bullet trains at a cost of Rs 7,000 crore in a deal that includes technology transfer, Economic Times has reported. The news comes at a time when the country’s first bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmadabad is making steady progress.

‘We’ll be getting 18 Shinkansen train sets from Japan. Each train will have ten coaches and would be able to cruise at the speed of 350 km per hour,” an official who was aware of the deal told ET. Japanese manufacturers will be participating in a tender to supply the trains.

The Mumbai-Ahmadabad High-Speed Rail (MAHSR) Corridor is being built through the public-private partnership (PPP) route. Japanese companies Kawasaki and Hitachi will be setting up facilities in India as part of the project. “We’ll be inviting bids to set up an assembling plant here in India as well under the Make in India programme,” the official told Economic Times.

The National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) has chosen the stretch between Billimora and Surat of Ahmadabad Mumbai high-speed rail corridor to operationalise the first stretch of the bullet train. Personnel from India will be trained to handle the project starting from February 2019 in Vadodara.