Perhaps taking a cue from the Economic Survey, which raised an alarm over falling share of Railways in freight movement, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley decided to allot Rs 1.48 lakh crore for capital expenditure in the Railways in FY19, the highest ever allocation in the history of Indian Railways.
The focus of investment is on safety, electrification, track doubling and tripling and in rolling stock such as train sets, wagons, coaches, and locomotives.
"It is encouraging to note the investment in the Railways is budgeted at a record level," said Umesh Chowdhary, Vice Chairman and MD of Titagarh Wagons. "We always believed that the government, which was concentrating on creating capacity by investing in track, will now invest in utilisation of capacity by investing of rolling stock, which will directly and positively impact the private sector and players like us."
The Railways have increased wagon procurement targets and also restarted purchase of coaches from the private sector with the recent awarding of a major wagon order, while another large tender is being readied.
It is electrifying a network of 4,000 km in FY18 and 18,000 km of doubling, third and fourth line works, and 5,000 km of gauge conversion would eliminate capacity constraints and transform almost the entire network into broad Gauge. Modern train-sets are being designed at the Integrated Coach Factory in Perambur. The first such train-set will be commissioned during 2018-19. "These will have better acceleration characteristics than conventional locomotive-hauled trains," said Rajaji Meshram, Director, Infrastructure, KPMG India.
According to Nabin Ballodia, partner with KPMG, the programme to strengthen infrastructure at goods sheds and fast-tracking of commissioning of private sidings will help increase modal share in freight traffic. High Speed Rail (HSR) would be a key area to attract investments. With the foundation for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project laid in September, Jaitley also announced setting up of an institute in Vadodara to train manpower required for HSR projects. "The institute indicates the plan to expand the outreach beyond the Mumbai-Ahmedabad project," Ballodia said.
Significant investments have been announced for suburban railways. "Mumbai's transport system," Jaitley said, "is being expanded to add 90 km of double-line tracks at a cost of over Rs 11,000 crore. Additional suburban network of 150 km is being planned at a cost of over Rs 40,000 crore." A suburban network of 160 km at a cost of Rs 17,000 crore is also being planned to cater to the growth of Bengaluru metropolis.
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