Rail Budget has focused on gaining freight share and implementation: S Mookerjee, Financial Commissioner, Railway Board

In this year's Rail Budget, we have continued with our efforts to bring overall improvement in the health of Indian Railways. The Railway Budget 2016 is in line with the government's vision of achieving holistic growth of the Indian Railways. This was stated by Mr S Mookerjee, Financial Commissioner, Railway Board during the post Budget interaction with the CII National Council earlier today.

Mr Mookerjee highlighted that the Ministry of Railways had charted the 5-year vision for the Rail sector in last year's Budget and had initiated numerous steps to take the sector to a new growth trajectory. Investment of Rs 8.5 Lac crore was envisaged for the next five years to be mobilized through multiple sources of investment.

According to Mr Mookerjee, the Ministry had, in this year's Budget, emphasized on Freight Policy Reforms with a view to increasing freight share and has laid steps to leverage ample opportunities for increasing the share of bulk goods by providing better services such as faster transit, review of tariff policy to evolve a competitive rate structure as well as efficient handling at terminals.

Elaborating further on the subject, he informed that the Plan Budget is up by 21% from Rs.1,00,011 crores to Rs.1,21,000 crores in 2016-17 and the Operating Ratio for 2016-17 was budgeted at 92% against 90% in 2015-16. Capital expenditure in 2016-17 has increased significantly and is pegged at Rs 1.21 lakh crore.

He stated that despite challenges, the Railway Board has implemented most of the initiatives announced during last year's Rail Budget.

He highlighted that this year, 48% of the resources had come through external sources and the same would be there for next year. He also said that the Safety Fund has been increased four times.

He also informed that the 'Bhoomi Poojan' of the already awarded two projects of locomotives would be shortly done by Hon'ble Minister. This year's Budget takes the transformation journey to next level. Innovative ways for fuel efficiency and changing system of operations would be introduced, stated Mr Mookerjee.

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