NEW DELHI, Feb 26: Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today announced a five-year action plan for Railways involving Rs 8 lakh crore which would focuses on safety, improvement in customer services, modernisation of infrastructure and making the sector self-sustainable.
Presenting his maiden Railway Budget Budget in Parliament, Mr Prabhu said he also planned to increase daily passenger capacity from 21 million to 30 million and increase track length from 1,14,000 km to 1,38,000 km and freight carrying capacity from one billion to 1.5 billion tonnes. One more important target was to generate large surpluses from operations to service the debt and to invest on an ongoing basis to replace the depreciating assets. The execution strategy will focus on five drivers: adopting a medium term perspective, building partnerships with states, PSUs and bi-lateral organisations and other governments to gain access to long-term financing and technology from overseas, the private sector to improve last mile connectivity, expand fleet of rolling stock and modernise station infrastructure. Besides leveraging additional resources, revamping management practices, systems, processes and retooling of human resources and setting standards for governance and transparency were other key elements of the five-year-action plan. During the next five years, a total of 8,56020 crore would be spent on various projects: Rs 1,99,320 crore on network decongestion, Rs 19,320 crore on network expansion, Rs 39,000 crore on national projects(North East and Kashmir connectivity projects), Rs 1,27,000 crore on safety, Rs 5,000 crore on IT, Rs 1,02,000 crore on rolling stocks, Rs 1,25,000 crore on passenger amenities, Rs 65,000 crore on high speed rail and elevated corridors, Rs 1,00,000 crore on station development and logistics park and Rs 13,200 crore on other heads. (UNI)
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