GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
Ministry of Railways

 RAJYA SABHA
UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 2005
TO BE ANSWERED ON 30.03.2012
Revival of Railways

2005. SHRI RAJEEV CHANDRASEKHAR

Will the Minister of RAILWAYS be pleased to state: -

a)      Whether it is a fact that the losses of Railways have mounted to alarming levels;

b)      If so, the present status of the losses of Railways;

c)      The reasons for these losses; and

d)      The measures Government proposes to take to revive/improve the viability of Railways and not make it yet another sick PSU?

 ANSWER
MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS
(SHRI BHARATSINGH SOLANKI)

a)      & b) No, Sir. It is submitted that Railways are not running into losses. However, the level of intemal resources generated since 2008-09 reduced owing to severe impact of implementation of recommendations of VI Central Pay Commission. As a result, railways had to resort to withdrawal from fund balances and also take a loan off 3,000 crore in 2011-12 to meet urgent plan investment requirements. Railways however, discharged full dividend liability in all these years. The position of internal resources generated since 2007-08 is as under:-

                                                                                                                                     (Rs in crore)

Thus it is seen that financial position is improving as the impact of Pay Commission has stabilized.

 c)      & d): The main reasons for shortfall in internal resources are less than expected growth in earnings along with higher operating expenditure and pension payments. However in order to improve its financial health, Railways are continuously striving to augment traffic earnings and containing the expenditure.

                           The measures to improve the financial health of the Railways include                   rationalization of freight/fare structure besides other measures such as improving                     throughput through increased productivity and efficiency, reduction in wagon turnaround time, increasing carrying capacity (25 tonne) routes, and introduction of Freight Incentive Schemes for retaining and attracting additional traffic, introduction of more attractive Incentive Scheme for parcel  extension of Passenger Reservation System (PRS) and Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) facilities to more and more location, speeding up of trains, review of trains with low patronage, deployment of additional coaches in well patronized trains, vigorous checking of ticket less travelling, additional leasing of parcel space in certain nominated trains, leasing of vacant compartment of guard in front of SLR coach etc. ln addition, efforts to improve productivity by better man power planning, assets utilization, inventory management, fuel consumption etc. and controlling expenditure through number of austerity/economy measures are continuously being pursued.