Indian Railways will spend R1.60 lakh crore in buying rolling stock in next five years, as it aims to expand its network to haul more freight and passengers to raise earnings. The gross revenue of the transporter has remained stagnant at around 1.5% of the country?s gross domestic product in last 12 years. The railways aims to take it to 3% by 2020.
The investment plan also aims at increasing the railways? share in transport of goods in the country from 35% now to 50% by 2020. ?The dedicated freight corridors in the eastern and western part of the country will lead us to that goal. But we need to have adequate rolling stock to run on the routes,? a senior railway ministry official told FE.
Under the rolling stock procurement plan, which will be implemented in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2012-17), the railways will procure 1.44 lakh wagons to carry more freight. Passenger fares could not be increased in the last eight railway budgets, but freight rates have been increased regularly under the dynamic freight policy followed by the transporter.
The entity is developing two dedicated freight corridors covering 3,322 km in eight states. They will be fully operational by 2016-17. Four more corridors will be developed at a later stage. In addition to the corridors, the railways has planned to expand its current rail network of 66,000 km by 25,000 km by 2020. All these measures put together will increase the demand for rolling stock by more than 60%.
For example, the demand for diesel locomotives will shoot up to 4,644 between 2012-13 and 2019-20, while that for electric engines will rise to 3,726. The requirement of coaches and wagons will increase to 43,968 and 2.55 lakh, respectively, during the period. The rolling stock and rail infrastructure will be used to hike freight carriage from 924 million tonnes (mt) in 2010-11 to 1,850 mt in 2020 and passenger load from 7,831 million to 15,180 million in 2020.
The railways has to expedite the process of awarding projects to set up manufacturing facilities for locomotives and coaches to procure the required units of rolling stock. It had planned manufacturing units for locomotives, its components and coaches in Bihar and West Bengal in joint venture with private companies. However, the process of bidding out the projects is still on after four years of formalising the project. The financial bidding for locomotive projects, for which five foreign companies are shortlisted, has been postponed indefinitely.