New Delhi: With focus on turnaround of the railways, Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu is all set to unveil the Rail Budget on Thursday with a strong stress on financial consolidation and “collaboration and cooperation” as the mantra for the national transporter. Prabhu is likely to substantially hike the budget plan beyond Rs 1.10 lakh crore last year, he is expected to unveil a slew of measures to raise additional funds.
“The Rail Budget will be in the interest of the nation and railways,” Mr Prabhu told reporters on Wednesday.
Read: Rail Budget 2016: What to expect from Suresh Prabhu
The officials stated that the budget has been prepared within the current financial constraint to unleash massive capacity augmentation, with strong thrust on enhancing passenger amenities.
“There may be features to introduce the models of pay more for additional amenities. There will also be strong thrust on real-time transmission of information to the passengers and redressal of their grievances,” said a senior official of the railway board.
The railways has, incidentally, completed the exercise to collect feedback on the concept note for the constitution of the Rail Tariff Authority.
Read: Railway Budget 2016: More public cash eyed as turnaround remains elusive
Suresh Prabhu may inform the Parliament about setting up of the Rail Tariff Authority in a bid to put in place a professional mechanism for dispute resolution with private players, besides suggesting the passenger and freight fares. Since the Railways has to mobilise resources to meet the additional burden of about Rs 30,000 crores on account of implementation of the 7th Pay Commission recommendations, speculations are rife that Prabhu may bite the bullet and hike the passenger fares, besides doing so nominally for the freight too.
“The buzz word is co-operation and collaboration. The Railways is collaborating with state governments and private players for taking up new projects. The Rail Budget may unveil more focus in this context,” added the official.
The budget may also unveil a mechanism to tap the non-conventional sources of revenue generation by land monetisation, and targetting the non-conventional sources of freight.
Read: Railway Budget 2016: Quicken pending projects, says divisional authority
Besides, it may also unveil a few big ticket projects, including workshops to manufacture train sets, which can clock a speed of 200 kmph through the public-private-partnership mode.
Prabhu is also expected to touch upon the subject of speed, and may inform about the rollout of a few semi-high speed trains in the coming months. He is also likely to allocate funds for initial capital for a new corporation to be set up to execute the high speed rail corridor between Ahmedabad-Mumbai for which India has signed an agreement with Japan.
