Interim Budget: Railways get 3 new corridors; 40,000 bogies to be upgraded

Proposals will lead to safety and higher travel speed for passengers, says Finance Minister

Putting development of Indian Railways on the fast track, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday lined up a capital expenditure (capex) of Rs 2.65 trillion for the railways, marginally up by 2 per cent compared to the revised estimates (RE) of the last Budget. 

In her interim Budget for 2024-25, the higher capex comes from a record share from the government budget support or general revenues pegged at Rs 2.52 trillion. This is against Rs 2.4 trillion in the RE of the last Budget, up by 5 per cent.  

Capex was up from Rs 2.6 trillion mentioned in the RE of the previous financial year.

On the other hand, the national transporter is targeting an operating ratio of 98 per cent for the financial year, as compared to a revised ratio of 98.7 per cent in 2023-24. This means that the railways aims to spend Rs 98 for every Rs 100 it earns in 2023-24.

The other contributors to the Budget are Rs 10,000 crore from extra budgetary resources, Rs 3,000 crore from internal resources and Rs 200 crore from the Nirbhaya Fund. 

The net revenue expenditure of railways is placed at Rs 2.79 trillion in the Budget Estimates (BE) of 2024-25 against Rs 2.59 trillion in RE 2023-24.

In what can be seen as major investments in the coming years, Sitharaman announced three major economic railway corridor programmes — covering energy, mineral and cement corridors, port-connectivity corridors, and high traffic density corridors.

In addition, 40,000 normal rail bogies are being converted into the Vande Bharat standards to enhance safety, convenience and comfort of passengers.

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Indian Railways sees the new projects as an effort to increase passenger capacity to 10 billion per year, from around 8 billion now.

The economic corridor projects were identified under the PM Gati Shakti for enabling multi-modal connectivity. This is targeted at improving logistics efficiency and reducing costs.

“The resultant decongestion of the high-traffic corridors will also help in improving operations of passenger trains, resulting in safety and higher travel speed for passengers. Together with dedicated freight corridors, these three economic corridor programmes will accelerate our GDP growth and reduce logistic costs,” said Sitharaman.  

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“The announcements are the blueprint for development of railways and expanding capacity in the coming years. Under this blueprint, firstly, we're looking at how to increase passenger capacity to 10 billion per year, and eliminate waiting lists in the process,” said Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Railways.

The total receipt of railways comprising revenues from passenger, goods, other coaching, sundry, other heads and Railway Recruitment Boards was seen at Rs 2.79 trillion in the BE of 2024-25. This is against the RE for 2023-24 at Rs 2.59 trillion, posting an increase of 8 per cent.

There was a considerable reduction in internal and extra budgetary resources, which came down by 35 per cent from Rs 20,000 crore in 2023-24 RE to Rs 13,000 crore in 2024-25.