Union minister of housing and urban affairs, Hardeep Puri, has stated that there is no pending proposal from AP government for sanction of Visakhapatnam metro rail project. The Union ministers written reply, to a starred question by GVLNarasimha Rao,Rajya Sabhamember from BJP, read that the Central government had requested AP to resubmit a proposal as per the revised Metro Rail Policy, 2017.
The government has not submitted any proposal in this regard, the minister said, adding that in 2018, AP had informed that they intended to build a Light rail project under public private PARTNERSHIP mode and requested the Centres support for external financial assistance from Korea (Korean Exim Bank). However, the Korean bank was unable to fund the project. The AP government was informed about the Korean banks refusal in April 2019 and was asked if the metro project proposal may be proposed for loan assistance to other bilateral or multilateral agencies.