Railways Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu today said that the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) would unbundle its catering services by categorizing it into food preparation and food distribution in a phased manner.
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No price hike in fares.
Railway-related stocks Kalindee Rail (KALI.NS) and Texmaco Rail (TEXA.NS) extended losses after the budget as Prabhu, to rounds of parliamentary applause, stuck largely to smaller announcements such as free WiFi at railway stations and the world’s first bio-vacuum toilet on a train. The NDA government did raise passenger fairs in a pre-Budget move immediately after coming to power, but that has not helped the Railways raise its revenue substantially. Nalin Jain, President South Asia, GE Transportation and Aviation has said the Railway Minister has moved forward on the roadmap announced past year to rejuvenate Indian Railways.
He said, Mizoram and Manipur are also set to come on the Broad Gauge map of the country soon with commissioning of the Kathakal-Bhairabi and Arunachal-Jiribam Gauge Conversion projects. He also proposed the introduction of new train services.
“These are challenging times, toughest time; facing dual headwinds” -Mr.Prabhu said.
The Railway Minister also announced the addition of 2-4 Deen Dayalu coaches in some long distance trains for unreserved travel to enhance our carrying capacity for the masses.
For improving quality of travel for unreserved passenger, a superfast “Antyodya” express service would be introduced. People expressed that they are happy with the Rail Budget as there has been no hike in the passenger fare and increase in quota for women and senior citizens.
Moreover, the finance ministry has chose to keep the budgetary allocation to the railways ministry at Rs 40,000 crore, same as past year.
Yet, he assured, the performance of Indian Railways will improve with the adoption of what he termed as three pillars of strategic thought process – new ways of generating revenues, new norms for spending money and new structures for executive projects and programmes.
Indian Railways will borrow Rs 20,000 crore from markets through its two companies IRFC and Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd for capital expenditure during 2016-17, a whopping 69 per cent rise over the current fiscal year’s revised estimate.
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It is hard to be progressive, much less adventurous, with the Rail Budget, when revenue collection targets become hard to meet or when freight continues to move away from the railways to the road sector.
