 |
| Railway Budget 2014 |
Thrust
1. Safety 2. Project Delivery 3. Passenger Amenities/Services
with focus on food services & on cleanliness, sanitation, toilets 4.
Financial Discipline 5. Resource Mobilization 6. IT Initiatives
7. Transparency & System Improvements.
Major Challenges facing the Railway System
1. Vast tracts of hinterland waiting for rail connectivity.
2. Railways expected to earn like a commercial enterprise but serve like a
welfare organization.
3. Railways carry Social Service Obligation of more than Rs 20,000 cr by
carrying services below cost. This is nearly 16.6% of GTR and is almost
half of Railways’ Plan Outlay under budgetary sources.
4. Surplus revenues declining; Hardly any adequate resources for its
development works.
5. Tariff policy adopted lacked rational approach; passenger fares kept lower
than costs; loss per passenger kilometer increased from 10 Paise per Km
in 2000-01 to 23 Paise in 2012-13.
6. ‘Decade of Golden Dilemma’ – choosing between commercial and social
viability.
7. Share of Railways in freight traffic coming down consistently.
8. Rs 5 lakh crore required for ongoing projects alone.
9. Focus so far in sanctioning more and more projects with inadequate
prioritization rather than completing them; Of the 674 projects worth Rs
1,57,883 cr sanctioned in the last 30 years, only 317 could be completed.
Completing the balance requires Rs 1,82,000 cr.
10. Most of Gross Traffic Receipts is spent on fuel, salary and pension, track
& coach maintenance and on safety works . In the year 2013-14, Gross
Traffic Receipts were ` 1,39,558 crore and total Working Expenses were
` 1,30,321 crore,
11. The surplus, after paying obligatory dividend and lease charges, was
` 11,754 crore in 2007-08 and is estimated to be ` 602 crore in the
current financial year.
Key Highlights
* No new increase in passenger fares and freight charges
* 58 new trains and extension of 11; 864 additional EMUs to be introduced in Mumbai over 2 years
* Bullet train on Mumbai-Ahmedabad Sector
* Diamond quadrilateral for high speed trains
* Plan to hike speed of trains to 160-200 km/hr in 9 sectors
* Online booking to support 7,200 tickets/minute; to allow 1.2 lakh users log in simultaneously
* Reservation system to be revamped, ticket-booking through mobile phones, post offices to be popularised
* Online platform, unreserved tickets
* Combo parking-platform tickets at stations
* Women RPF Constables to escort ladies coaches; 4,000 women constables to be inducted
* Retiring room facility to be extended to all stations
* Battery operated cars for differently abled and senior citizens at major stations
* Feedback services through IVRS on quality of food
* Food can be ordered through SMS, phone; Food courts at major stations
* Cleanliness budget up by 40 percent over last year
* CCTVs to be used at stations for monitoring cleanliness
* Setting up of corpus fund for stations' upkeep; RO drinking water at stations and trains
* Automatic door closing in mainline and sub-urban coaches
* FDI in railway projects, except in operations
* FDI, domestic investments in rail infrastructure
* Office-on-Wheels: Internet & Workstation facilities on select trains
* Wi-Fi in A-1, A category stations and in select trains
* Rail university for technical and non-technical subjects
* Some stations to be developed to international standards through PPP model
* Parcel traffic to be segregated to separate terminals to make passenger traffic unhindered
* Loss per passenger per kilometre up from 10p (in 2000-01) to 23p (2012-13)
* Solar energy to be tapped at major stations
* Highest ever plan outlay of Rs 65,455 crore for 2014-15
* Expenditure in 2014-15 pegged at Rs 149,176 crore.
Courtesy: Indian Railway, Govt of India.
