Budget 2024 | Three economic rail corridors on the anvil
The Hindu
Budget 2024: The Union Ministry of Railways in New Delhi has been allocated ₹2.55 lakh crore for infrastructure investment in 2024-25, with plans for economic railway corridors and train bogie overhauls.
With a thrust on investment in infrastructure, the Union Ministry of Railways has been allocated ₹2.55 lakh crore for the financial year 2024-25, up by 5.8% from last year’s allocation of ₹2.41 lakh crore.
Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that up to 82% of last year’s allocation had been spent by the end of January.
According to the Interim Budget 2024 document, the Ministry of Railways could only utilise ₹1.6 lakh crore, based on the actual numbers released for 2022-23.
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Mr. Vaishnaw said that the revised operating ratio for 2023-24 was 98.7%, which is the ratio of working expenses to traffic earnings. “All expenditure for pension is being borne from railway revenue,” he added.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, said that the Centre will implement three major economic railway corridor programmes — energy, mineral and cement corridor, also being referred to as Energy Economic Corridor; port connectivity corridor a.k.a Rail Sagar; and high traffic density corridors a.k.a Amrit Chaturbhuj.
A total of 434 projects with an investment of ₹11 lakh crore will be rolled out under these programmes, said Mr. Vaishnaw. “An integrated approach to railway planning has been undertaken by consulting 18 Ministries and this plan has been in the works for the past two years. We are in the process of preparing detailed project reports, freezing final alignments and interacting with State governments for the smooth working of the development along these corridors,” Mr. Vaishnaw said in response to a question by The Hindu.
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