Railways needs allocations to fund its expansion plans

New Delhi, June 13 (UNI) The Railway Ministry today sought adequate budgetary allocations from the Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission to support its capacity augmentation plans.

It warns that in absence of adequate resources, it would also not be able to execute mammoth projects like the dedicated freight corridor in the stipulated time period of five years.

Stating this at a seminar by Assocham on 'Dedicated Rail Freight Corridor-Public Private Partership', Minister of State for Railways R Velu said that despite registering a cash surplus of Rs 20,000 crore in 2006-07, railways needed sufficient funds through budgetary allocations to achieve its objectives of growing ahead than the GDP growth for its ambitious expansion programmes.

He urged the Planning Commission and the Finance Ministry to take note of railways' multiple expansion requirements, indicating that provisions should be made in advance so that budget proposals for 2008-09 would include sufficient allocations for railways to support its expansion drive and substantially enhance its operation ratio from present 78.7 per cent.

The Minister regretted that this ratio is lowest ever for Indian Railways.

Mr Velu also announced that railways has decided to execute Delhi-Kolkata, Delhi-Mumbai freight corridor projects through public-private partnership as more than Rs 30,000 crore would be required for its implementation within a period of five years.

The railways have also decided to expand the freight corridor projects in four areas, comprising North-South, East-West, South and East coast without giving a particular time frame for their execution.

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