June 13, 2018 TnH Global 1

Our target is to turn railways profitable, double its revenue: Piyush Goyal

Railway minister Piyush Goyal has set a target of doubling the national transporter’s revenues to Rs 4 lakh crore by 2025 to make it profitable by then. Over this period, the total investment by the railways would be about Rs 9 lakh crore, he said.

“Our target is to turn the railways profitable so that it doesn’t have to take any gross budgetary support from the government,” Goyal told ET in an interview. “We intend to double revenues by 2025.”

The minister said his focus was to increase capacity by improving signalling, expanding the electrified network, adding more lines in congested stretches and enhancing utilisation of assets. “Reducing cost is the most important thing. If we were to electrify large parts of our network, we can easily save around Rs 15,000 crore in fuel bill itself,” the minister said.

Indian Railways has prepared the plan to electrify a majority of its lines in another five years, which will help replace diesel engines with electric ones on major routes.

“Also, just by introducing modern signalling on the golden quadrilateral route, we can increase the line capacity by 50%. These lines currently carry 58% of freight,” Goyal said. “Just imagine the kind of revenue we can get by just investing Rs 12,000 crore in signalling, which will allow us to run more trains in shorter blocks.” India’s first bullet train project that will connect Ahmedabad with Mumbai is on schedule.

“We’re also looking at launching four-five more such projects between metro cities,” said Goyal. ET had reported that the project, which has a 2022 deadline, is facing land acquisition hurdles in Maharashtra. Goyal, also in charge of the finance ministry pending the return of Arun Jaitley from medical leave, said the NDA will get 350 seats in the 2019 general elections.

He said the listing of Rites and Ircon would take place soon, while that of IRCTC and IRFC would be taken up later. He said the government was looking at non-fare revenues to increase investment in railways.