CII, FICCI hail rail budget as ‘balancing act’ despite fund crunch

trivedi.jpg.crop_display.jpg

Railway minister Dinesh Trivedi’s maiden rail budget found favour with corporate India. Apart from hailing the budget as a bold and pragmatic one, industry bodies welcomed the passenger rail fare hike as a prudent fiscal measure.

The rail budget is a good balancing act, given fund constraints, applauded Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) that claimed the budget to be largely in alignment with its recommendations. “The five-point agenda outlined in the budget along with focus on bringing down operating ratio through greater efficiency will go a long way in infusing the necessary momentum to rail infrastructure upgradation,” said Chandrajit Banerjee, director general, CII.

The announcements of a new member (Railway Board) for public private partnership (PPP) and Station Development Corporation have also been applauded by corporates as it would help bring in guidelines to attract private investments

“Separate railway tracks for freight movement will help in reducing traffic congestion,” said P. Murari, adviser to Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) president.

Pointing out the budget’s reference to linking fares to fuel in the near future, Mr Murari said, “The efforts to bring down the operating ratio from 95 per cent o 74 per cent in the terminal year of 12th Five Year Plan. is laudable.”

However, on the downside, the budgeted growth in gross traffic receipts at 27.6 per cent for the next fiscal is an ambitious target, opines FICCI. The budgeted freight earnings target for next fiscal at 30.2 per cent may be difficult to achieve as the share of freight in total railway earnings has dipped to 66 per cent in 2011-12.

The downward revision of the surplus of receipts over expenditure from Rs5,158 crore to Rs1,492 crore shows a sharp deterioration in railway finances, which is not healthy, FICCI cautioned.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/134000" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-f61a366e6e91d805795dd0876d54a7a2" value="form-f61a366e6e91d805795dd0876d54a7a2" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80044216" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.