Amid the economic slowdown blues, the Indian railways has some good news at the threshold of the new year. The railways registered a growth of 13.93% in gross earnings for the period of April-November 2008 at Rs 49,818.10 crore, compared to Rs 43,726.51 crore during the same period last year.
The freight earnings have gone up from Rs 29,146.18 crore during the period last year to Rs 33,392.83 crore during April-November 2008, resgistering an increase of 14.57%. Passenger revenue earnings during first eight months of the financial year 2008-09 were Rs 14,324.32 crore compared with Rs 12,698.25 crore during the same period last year, registering an increase of 12.81%.
The number of passengers booked during April-November 2008 were 4717.37 million compared with 4430.75 million during the same period last year, up 6.47%.
The railways have carried 534.60 million tonne of freight during the first eight months of the current financial year, up by 32.41 million tonne, or 6.45% over the traffic of 502.19 million tonne carried during the corresponding period last year.
With its house in order, the railways have lined up mega expansion plans aiming at chugging ahead with the growth story. This envisages mega investments in greenfield production units. The Eleventh Plan will see construction of wheel manufacturing plant at Chhapra with the production capacity of 1,00,000 wheels per year, electric locomotive factory at Madhepura with the capacity of 120 electric locomotives per year, rail coach factory at Rae Bareilly witha target of 1,000 coaches per year and a diesel locomotive manufacturing unit at Marhowra with production capacity of 150 locomotives per year. These units will be set in joint venture with public private partnership.
In addition, while presenting the Railway Budget 2008-09, it has been announced that a new rail coach factory will be set up in the state of Kerala to meet the requirement of passenger coaches in the country.
Also, the committee on infrastructure, under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, has approved the proposal to develop New Delhi railway station as a world-class station. The ministry of railways has decided to constitute a core group for monitoring of public-private partnership (PPP) projects related to development of 26 world-class railway stations across the country, including New Delhi.
However, railways has also seen some roadblocks in the moderisation of the New Delhi railway station as a world-class railways station. The ministry of railways, in October this year, scrapped the bidding process for the Rs 6,000 crore project. It reinvited the bids from the interested parties and also revised the indicative cost of the project at Rs 12,000 crore. However, the invitation of request for qualification has been deferred four times now. The rail ministry is silent over the issue.
The issue was caught in controversy over the cross ownership issue. As per one of the clauses in the request for qualification (RFQ) for the project, bidders with common controlling shareholders or other ownership interest cannot compete as it could lead to ?conflict of interest?.
Also, the levels of direct or indirect shareholding by an individual or firm in one bidder company should not be over 5% of its paid-up capital and subscribed capital, and not more than 1% in another bidder. A number of private bidders were disqualified because of the clause. The finance ministry reportedly suggested that if the clause stalled the project, it was advisable to drop it and float the tender again. It was then that another tender was floated in October this year.