* Indian metro networks less than London's Tube
* Congested cities set to add 200 mln more people by 2030
* Foreign, local firms eye $5.8 bln in annual orders
By Tommy Wilkes
NEW DELHI, March 8 (Reuters) - India's congested cities are
awarding new rail projects at a record rate, creating a boon for
companies such as Siemens SIEGn.DE to Larsen & Toubro Ltd
LART.NS in a sector forecast to offer $5.8 billion worth of
orders next year.
India currently has about 300 km (186 miles) of operational
metro track laid across seven cities in a country with an urban
population of 400 million, a network that is smaller than the
size of London's Tube network which serves a city of nearly nine
million.
In a bid to boost public transport, Prime Minister Narendra
Modi's government last week said it would boost the budget to
expand the Delhi metro by almost a third on the previous year,
as well as provide more funding for other state authorities.
Analysts at Axis Capital estimate India will award
construction of 650 kms of track worth 2 trillion rupees ($30
billion) over the next three to five years. Annual metro
rail-related orders in India have totalled about 200 billion
rupees in each of the last three years.
Even if some of those projects remain on paper, the
potential for manufacturers and engineering firms like Germany's
Siemens, France's Alstom SA ALSO.PA and locals like BEML Ltd
BEML.NS and Larsen & Toubro Ltd LART.NS is too big to
ignore.
"The way metro rail boomed in China is about to happen in
India," said Tilak Raj Seth, the head of Siemens India's
transport business, which is supplying signalling and
electricification for projects in Delhi and Chennai.
Bombardier India's unit, part of the Canadian group
BBDb.TO , has a backlog of 160 metro coaches and forecasts
demand for another 3,000 by 2021.
Alstom India Ltd ALSM.NS is on course to double the
revenue earned from metro projects to 200 million euros ($220
million) this financial year and is targeting 1 billion euros a
year by 2021, its managing director said.
"What India completed (in laid tracks) in the last 20 years,
I would expect that we will complete that in the next 2-3
years," managing director Bharat Salhotra told Reuters.
He said Alstom would spend 25-30 million euros over the next
few years to expand its Indian factories, after winning orders
to supply carriages for the cities of Jaipur and Kochi.
RUSH HOUR
India's rush to build more metros is a late one: booming
populations and rising car ownership have created traffic-choked
cities, slowing movement of goods and people in the places where
most of India's future economic growth will be made.
China has built metro rail networks in about 25 cities
spanning more than 2,000 kilometres, largely in the last two
decades, while India has barely managed 300 kilometres, most of
it in Delhi, in 13 years.
It's a rate of construction India needs to quickly up as its
urban areas are expected to become home to an additional 200
million people by 2030.
As well as the projects in 19 cities completed or approved,
at least eight more cities including Patna, the capital of
India's poorest state, and Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, have
drawn up plans - although experts caution at least some of the
schemes will remain on paper.
Other cities have struggled. Mumbai, the second most densely
populated city on earth, has managed to build just 11 kilometres
of track in a decade, after problems acquiring land and
contractual disputes. A new line in the southern tech hub of
Bengaluru has missed a series of deadlines for completion.
($1 = 67.0200 Indian rupees)
($1 = 0.9106 euros)
(Editing by Miral Fahmy)