Railways Minister, Suresh Prabhu, presented the rail budget for 2015-16 today, giving emphasis to improving capacity on existing networks. He highlighted the issue of chronic underinvestment in railways which has stranded capacity augmentation as well as safety, quality of service and efficiency in the sector.
The size of the Plan Budget for 2015-16 has gone up from Rs 65,798 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 1,00,011 crore, a hike of 52 per cent. Support from the Central Government constitutes 41.6 per cent of the total Plan Budget and internal generation accounts for 17.8 per cent.
Highlights of the Rail Budget:
- No hike in passenger fares
- Freight rates hike for Urea - 10 per cent; Iron & steel - 0.8 per cent; LPG - 0.8 per cent; Coal - 6.3 per cent; and Cement - 2.7 per cent
- Projects worth Rs 2,500 crore proposed to be launched through BOT/ Annuity route including Wardha-Nagpur 3rd line, Kazipet-Vijaywada 3rd line, Bhadrak-Nargundi 3rd line, and Bhuj-Nalia Gauge Conversion
- 77 projects sanctioned covering 9,400 km of doubling / tripling / quadrupling works along with their electrification at a total cost of Rs 96,182 crore
- Rs 2,374 crore allocated for Traffic facility works like construction of longer loops, building by-pass lines, etc
- Target to award 750 km of civil contracts and 1,300 km of system contracts in 2015-16 for dedicated freight corridor projects
- Durgawati-Sasaram, a 55 km section of Eastern DFC is proposed to be completed in the current year. While Preliminary Engineering-cum- TrafficSurvey (PETS) for four other DFCs is in progress and will be completed this year
- A state-of-the-art Perishable Cargo Centre is under completion at the Azadpur Mandi with a scientific banana-ripening Centre
- Solar power plant at Katra station slated for completion in March 2015. Further, 1,000 MW solar plants will be set up by the developers on railway/private land and on rooftops of railway buildings at their own cost, with subsidy/viability gap funding support of Ministry of Non-Renewable Energy, in the next five years
- An investment of Rs 8.5 lakh crore proposed for the next five years, including Rs 65,000 crore for High Speed Rail & Elevated corridor and Rs 1,02,000 crore for rolling stock
More Project Info:
Kazipet-Vijaywada Third DL Railway Line Project
Eastern Freight Corridor Project
Solar Power (Katra) Project
Perishable Cargo Centre (New Azadpur) Project