Assocham suggests commercialisation of Railways wasteland

New Delhi, Feb 9 (UNI) With a view to make Indian Railways world class institution, industry body Assocham today suggested the Railway Ministry to commercialise its 45,000 hectare of wasteland for real estate development and double its short distance fares from 25 paise to 50 paise per km.

''With these measures, railways can enhance its revenues and profitability far greater and execute its modernisation programme without seeking much of budgetary support and fiscal assistance from overseas multilateral agencies,'' Assocham President Venugopal N Dhoot said in a pre-budget representation submitted to Railway Minister Lalu Prasad.

Mr Prasad should incorporate provisions in its forthcoming budget proposals for fiscal 2007-08 with sufficient fiscal concessions for the realty developers to come forward to develop wasteland to enhance its revenue and make use of the land for profiteering, Mr Dhoot added.

The chamber suggested that Indian Railway Finance corporation Ltd should be empowered to increase its corpus size from higher allocation from the Finance Ministry and issue Letter of Intent (LoIs), seeking public private partnership to commercially utilise such huge landscape of Indian railway for productive purpose.

It also said the financial institution, belonging to railways, should extend long term loans to real estate developers and hotelier with concessional interest rates for developments of its land with debt equity ratio that the financial corporation should empowered to decide on.

UNI