Railway minister Dinesh Trivedi on Wednesday said Tuesday?s freight hike will help him balance next week?s Railway Budget, but hinted that despite the national transporter?s troubled finances, a passenger fare hike may have to wait longer.

The minister acknowledged that India?s largest transport infrastructure needed many changes, including a shift to corporate accounting standards from the single-entry system it has been following for decades.

?The Railways doesn?t have an accounting system,? he said. ?I mean, it has reserves that keep floating from one head to another. This should not happen. It should adopt a corporate accounting system.?

Such a switch will also be necessary for the organisation to borrow from the market to finance the R8,39,000-crore expenditure planned for the next five years, as per the Pitroda committee.

Speaking at the Idea Exchange programme of the Express Group, Trivedi said he will try to provide a long-term vision for modernisation in the Railway Budget on March 14, including a

National Policy on Railways he said should continue irrespective of change in ministers.

But he fought shy of raising passenger fares: ?The thinking of Mamata Banerjee is that passenger fares should not be tinkered with. I am trying to find other ways to raise income like utilisation of land and advertising,? Trivedi said.

There have only been piecemeal changes in railways? accounting system. As a result, ministers have managed to get away with imaginary surpluses. In 2009, the then railway minister Mamata Banerjee had pointed out that the transporter had tweaked accounting norms to present a higher-than-actual cash surplus during her predecessor Lalu Prasad?s tenure from 2004-05 to 2008-09.

Lalu had claimed to have generated a surplus of Rs 89,000 crore during the five-year period. However, Banerjee found that the cash surplus was calculated without accounting for payment of dividend and accrual of Pay Commission liabilities. The surplus would have been Rs 39,500 crore if the two components were taken into account, she had said.

Trivedi said the freight rate hike was required to balance the budget. ?Our operating ratio has deteriorated to 97% against the target of curtailing it to 91.1% for the full fiscal. We needed to hike freight rates to balance the budget,? he said. Operating ratio is the money spent on earning a rupee.

On Tuesday, railways raised freight rates by 10-15%, which is expected to result in an increase of up to Rs 20,000 crore in revenue in a year. ?The hike will have some impact on commodity prices. In case of cement, end consumer price is expected to increase 3%. For steel, it could be 1.5% while power could see a burden of 3.5%,? a senior railway official said on the condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, railway finances are likely to be burdened further as finance ministry is expected to impose 10% service tax on the transporter. ?We have sought exemption but indications are negative,? the official quoted above said.

On bidding out long-pending locomotive projects in Bihar, Trivedi said his ministry has prepared the Cabinet note encompassing changes in technology transfer and price escalation clauses and the same will be put up for discussion among ministries. Railways is in the process of awarding multi-year engine procurement contracts to private sector since 2007. However, an official said: ?I don?t expect them to take off next year. Some action may be seen a year after that.?