Rail budget visionary but pending projects on priority need to be expedited: Ralhan

New Delhi, February 25, 2016: Shri S C Ralhan, President, FIEO while commenting on the Railway Budget 2016-17 stated that it envisions/conceives the strategy of Nav Arjan – New revenues; Nav Manak – New norms; Nav Sanrachna – New Structures towards achieving its objectives of transforming the railways with the ambitious target of commissioning 2,500 km Broad Gauge lines almost 30% higher than last year; Mobile Apps; different digital solutions for ticketing besides ‘Operation Five Minutes’ to enable passengers to purchase tickets and a larger a National Rail Plan in order to provide long-term perspective to planning for augmenting the railway network and Port connectivity. This will ensure seamless logistics for exports for which the Tuna Port was commissioned this year and rail connectivity projects to ports of Jaigarh, Dighi, Rewas and Paradip are under implementation and rail connectivity for the ports of Nargol and Hazira under PPP are envisaged.

FIEO chief commended the rail budget for measures for winning back the lost modal share freight traffic which has been consistently declining over a long period of time through inter-alia rationalising the tariff structure besides expanding the freight basket of IR, rationalising the tariff structure and building terminal capacity by developing Rail side logistics parks and warehousing through PPP mode to bring the required efficiency and investment besides using TRANSLOC (the Transport Logistics Company of India) to bring about paradigm shift in its role as a national logistics provider enabling last mile connectivity for freight business/reduction in logistic costs while among others would be operationalised through rail side warehousing encouraging development of cold storage facilities on vacant land near freight terminals for which a policy would be issued in the next 3 months.

President, FIEO however felt that as per the report submitted on 16th April 2015 in the Lok Sabha, there is a large shelf of pending projects of Rs. 4,91,510 crores and for projects over 5 crores the implementation is as low as 3.25%. Notable projects include:

-Panvel- Jasai-JNPT [28.5 km];
-Bhusawal-Jalgaon [ 24.13 km ] -3rd line for which execution is 1.16% only in value terms and
-Kalyan-Kasara [67.62 kms]- 3rd line of which only 0.66% has been executed in value terms.

FIEO chief stated that these connectivities need to be addressed on a priority basis since 60% of the hinterland container traffic from North still moves through JNPT; and both Bhusawal and Kalyan are important junction and exit points for movement to North and elsewhere and need to be expedited given that container traffic shows a healthy growth of 16.3%.