Freight policy reforms to increase loading share: Rly

With the aim of increasing freight share, the Rail Budget has initiated freight policy reforms with provisions of reviewing the tariff policy to evolve a competitive rate structure.
Railways had in this year's budget, emphasised on freight policy reforms with a view to increasing freight share and has laid down 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, Railway Financial Commissioner (FC) S Mookerjee said here today.
He said Railways have made continuous efforts to bring overall improvement in the health of the public transporter.

The Rail Budget 2016 is in line with the government's vision of achieving holistic growth of the Railways, Mookerjee said in the post Rail Budget interaction with the CII National Council here.
Highlighting the five-year vision for the sector in the last year's budget, he said, numerous steps have been initiated to take the sector to a new growth trajectory.
"Investment of Rs 8.5 lakh crore was envisaged for the next five years to be mobilized through multiple sources of investment," FC said.

Elaborating further on the subject, he said the Plan Component is up by 21 per cent from Rs 1,00,011 cr to Rs 1,21,000 cr in 2016-17 and the operating ratio for 2016-17 was budgeted at 92 per cent against 90 per cent 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 railways has implemented most of the initiatives announced in last year's Rail Budget.
He said that this year 48 per cent of 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.