Railways to mobilise extra budgetary resources: Jena

New Delhi, Nov 14 (UNI) Indian Railways is confident of achieving its target of carrying 1100 million tonnes of freight and 8.4 billion of originating passengers by the year 2011-12, Railway Board Chairman K C Jena claimed today.

Delivering the key-note address to the first Investment Forum of the International Union of Railways (UIC), of which Mr Jena is the chairman, he said Indian Railways would require an investment of over Rs 2,50,000 crore during the ongoing XIth Five Year Plan to augment and upgrade the infrastructure. Most of this, about Rs 90,000 crore, will come from internal generation and as per the present indications, Central Government may supplement it through a budgetary support of Rs 60,000 crore.

Mr Jena said growth would falter unless Railways carry out a well thought out programme for capacity augmentation, removal of bottle-necks, modernisation of systems and new innovative ways of conducting business. Therefore, a significant expanded role has devolved upon mobilizing of extra-budgetary resources including through public-private-partnerships (PPP) in the XIth Five Year Plan.

He said the Railways had identified and earmarked areas for partnership, which include world class stations, setting up of manufacturing units and logistic parks, catering and tourism.

He further said after having an ''extremely good though limited'' experience with PPP, Indian Railways had created a dedicated Public Private Partnership (PPP) cell in the Ministry to provide a single-window service for PPP initiatives and to speed up the execution of projects so that it can be expanded in scale and scope.

The 'First UIC Investment Forum' brought together 27 world dignitaries, which include top officials from major global financial investment companies and consultants from 14 countries such as Morgan Stanley Bank, Booz&Co, JP Morgan, DB International, Babcock&Brown, Ernst&Young, Vossloh Locomotives, GmbH and East Japan Railway, to focus on investments required in Rail Sector in the region with a special emphasis on the Indian Railways.

Earlier, Minister of State for Railways Dr R Velu inaugurated the forum, jointly organised by the Ministry of Railways, and International Union of Railways (UIC).

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