Business daily The Nikkei on Tuesday reported that Japan is likely to win the right to construct India’s first-ever bullet train line. The country has offered more than 1 trillion yen (approximately Rs 54,000 crore) in loans to build the system, which will cost about Rs 98,000 crore. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe are expected to announce the deal when Abe visits India later this week, the report stated.

Tokyo had earlier been picked to assess the technical and financial feasibility of the 505-kilometre corridor between Ahmedabad and Mumbai and had cleared the project. The construction is expected to begin in 2017 and finish by 2023. Japan had earlier lost a deal to build a high-speed rail line in Indonesia to China.