Railway budget proposes a slew of measures for modernisation

After increasing railway passenger fares earlier this year, Union minister for railways Pawan Kumar Bansal refrained from increasing them again while presenting the railway budget for financial year 2013-14 on Tuesday. He said that Indian Railways will borrow Rs 15,103 crore from the markets to usher in modernisation and ensure safety of users. For this the new budget also proposes creation of a debt service fund. Meanwhile, freight rates for various commodities transported by the rail have been increased from five to eight per cent.

The new budget identifies heavy increase in fuel prices as a major reason for increase in cost of operations. This, however, hasn’t translated into increase in passenger fares. The minister during his budget speech said that the burden of increase of high speed diesel (HSD) prices would not be faced by the passengers. Instead, the budget proposes a hike in supplementary charges such as tatkal booking and for superfast trains. “The increase in fuel bill during 2013-14 on account of these revisions in 2012-13 alone would be more than Rs 5,100 crore. As for passenger fares, since these were revised only in January this year, I do not intend to pass on the additional burden to them now and railways will absorb the impact of Rs 850 cr on this account,” he said.