Facing financial crunch, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today said the Railways will launch an austerity drive to curtail administrative expenses in a substantial manner.
In addition to curbing expenses, the railways will also try to optimise operational expenses energy cost, Prabhu said while replying to the rail budget in the Lok Sabha.
He further said "our efforts are bringing results and this year, Rs 1,500 crore are being saved on account of optimisation of operations".
Stating that the efforts are directly on quantitative terms, he said "on electricity, an annualised saving of Rs 3,000 crore is to be achieved by the end of this year, a year before commitment. We are also working on administrative expenses to be curtailed."
Prabhu further said "an austerity drive has been planned to reduce it in a substantive manner. This is something which was the strategy. This strategy has been implemented in a big way. I will come to it later."
Talking about the capital expenditure on the Plan side, he said "I am very happy to say that we have been able to increase the Plan size to make Railways sustainable. If you do not invest in Railways, the present operation itself will suffer.
"At the same time, I really feel that I should accept all the demands of all the Members of Parliament. But how can I do that unless I have more resources available?" he said.
Referring to capex, he said "the resources can come through capital expenditure. Capital expenditure will create new lines, will actually add capacity. To do that, we have to increase the capex. Therefore, we are working on that."
"For every rupee we spend in the Railways, we have five times better impact on the economy as a whole. So, if one rupee is invested in the Railways, five rupees will be the benefit that will accrue to the economy. Therefore, we have decided to increase the capital expenditure.
