{"id":1139,"date":"2019-09-24T17:36:04","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T12:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2019-09-24T17:36:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T12:06:06","slug":"little-change-in-indian-railway-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/?p=1139","title":{"rendered":"Little change in Indian railway results"},"content":{"rendered":"

The third combined budget provided more evidence of Indian Railways\u2019 lackluster performance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Indian Railway reflecting a continuing decline in its market share for both freight and passenger traffic<\/strong><\/p>\n

Raghu Dayal<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"New Delhi: With parliamentary elections due to be held in around three months,\u00a0<\/strong>the national budget presented on February 1 offered little prospect of significant steps being taken to address the structural deficiencies afflicting the national railway.<\/p>\n

Presented by\u00a0Railways Minister Piyush Goyal\u00a0<\/strong>in the absence of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is convalescing, the third combined budget since the abolition of the separate railway budget in 2016 provided more evidence of Indian Railways\u2019 lackluster performance.<\/p>\n

Goyal reiterated the government\u2019s commitment to developing infrastructure, citing the construction of an average of 27 km of new roads per day, and pointed to the country\u2019s highest-ever sustained growth in air travel. But whereas the transport sector has been growing at 10% per annum, on the back of 7% economic growth, IR reported near-static carryings, reflecting a continuing decline in its market share for both freight and passenger traffic.<\/p>\n

Passenger ridership has risen by just 0\u00b78%, from 8,286 million trips in 2017-18 to the latest estimate of 8,354 million for 2018-19, and is projected to rise by 0\u00b79% to 8,428 million in 2019-20. Passenger-km increased by a paltry 0\u00b75%. However, higher average fares saw passenger earnings increase by 7%, from Rs. 486bn 2017-18 to an estimated Rs. 521bn in 2018-19; a further 7\u00b75% rise to Rs. 560bn is budgeted for 2019-20.<\/p>\n

The freight results are not very different. Originating freight volumes are up by 4\u00b78% from 1,160 million tonnes to the latest estimate of 1,216 million, but net tonne-km have fallen 0\u00b73% from 693 billion in 2017-18 to 691 billion for the current year.<\/p>\n

The budget envisages a further 4\u00b71% increase to 1,266 million tonnes and a 3\u00b74% increase to 714 billion net tonne-km. Growth has been constrained by IR\u2019s policy of raising freight charges ahead of inflation to help balance its books, reflected in a 10\u00b78% hike in revenue from Rs. 1,170bn in 2017-18 to Rs. 1,297bn this year and a projected 10\u00b72% increase to Rs. 1,430bn in 2019-20.<\/p>\n

In terms of expenditure, IR\u2019s wage bill this year is expected to top Rs. 858bn, up by Rs. 140bn year-on-year. Rs. 450m is to be spent recruiting 1,00,000 new employees during the next financial year. Yet there is no sign of IR launching a much-needed strategy to rationalize its myriad activities, disposing of non-core functions and streamlining the organization to focus on rapid decision-making and better delivery of services.<\/p>\n

Revenue up, costs rising<\/strong><\/p>\n

The budget anticipates a 10% increase in gross traffic receipts next year, from Rs. 1,967bn in 2018-19 to Rs. 2,167bn in 2019-20, but working expenses are estimated to rise from Rs. 1,410bn to Rs. 1,550bn. It seems that IR has once again had to resort to window-dressing to register a positive operating ratio, reducing the capital appropriation for depreciation and reportedly booking advance revenues from National Thermal Power Corp for coal transport.<\/p>\n

\"\"Thanks to this, the operating ratio has improved from 98\u00b74 in 2017-18 to an estimated 96\u00b72, but that is still well below the original target of 92\u00b78. IR is now expected to achieve an operating ratio of 95 in 2019-20, which is not particularly healthy.<\/p>\n

Capital expenditure next year is set at Rs. 1\u00b758tr, up from Rs. 1\u00b746tr this year and the highest-ever figure for the national railway. This includes Rs. 668bn of government support, up from Rs. 551bn in 2018-19, Rs. 452bn in 2016-17 and Rs. 418bn in 2015-16. The budget allocates Rs. 72\u00b76bn for new line construction, Rs. 61\u00b72bn for rolling stock and Rs. 22bn for gauge conversion. Another Rs. 17\u00b75bn will be spent on signaling and telecoms, and Rs. 7bn for capacity enhancement. Development of passenger amenities has been allocated Rs34bn, an Rs10bn increase.<\/p>\n

Hailing \u2018the safest year in history\u2019, Goyal announced that \u2018all unmanned level crossings on the broad gauge network have been eliminated\u2019, ridding the system of a major cause of accidents. Last year\u2019s budget had allocated funding to eliminate 4,267 such crossings over two years, but the work had been completed within one.<\/p>\n

Courtesy: London based website<\/strong>\u00a0“Railway Gazette”<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The third combined budget provided more evidence of Indian Railways\u2019 lackluster performance Indian Railway reflecting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"koo_publish_custom_meta":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1140,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions\/1140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}