With the rail corridors linking the four metros remaining choked, the national carrier has no alternative but to increase track capacity and counter the cascading effect of stagnation on major routes.  AK Mittal, chairman, Railway Board, explains to Arnab Dutta the priorities
set out in the Rail Budget 2015-16, which will usher in a new era of consolidation and modernisation for the Indian Railways. excerpts:

What is the main focus of this year’s budget?

The crux of the budget is to make Indian Railways self-sustainable and to bring in long-awaited reforms. Increase the capacity of the system, decongest the network and entirely change customer experience in our carriers — these are the  focus areas of this budget.

And, last but not least, today we have to depend on the finance ministry for budgetary support, but we will expand in a way that, in future, the extent of gross budgetary support (GBS) comes down significantly.

Given the financial condition of the Railways, how do you expect to achieve your targets?

It will be done through a multi-pronged approach. The Plan outlay has been increased to Rs 1 lakh crore for 2015-16, which includes a budgetary support of Rs 41,000 crore. And, for the next five years the total investment has been set at Rs 8.5 lakh crore.

We will augment our investment potential by drawing investments from the rail and other public sector units (PSUs)— that will give us around Rs17,000-18,000 crore apart from the Rs 17,000 crore of borrowings in 2015-16.

Since the railway minister’s speech did not mention any freight rate hike this time, there is some confusion on that. Can you throw some light?

This year, we have changed freight rate calculation as a whole. We have brought in changes for three basic parameters — we have increased the base rate and have changed the classification and slab rates too. The effect will be different for different kinds of commodities.

For some, the rate will increase and for some it will decrease. There will be approximately a 3% increase in freight revenue and it would add an extra Rs 4,000 crore to the railways’ exchequer in the next fiscal.

For Fy16, you have projected gross traffic receipts to grow by Rs 26,000 crore approximately. Isn’t that too optimistic an estimate?

This year, we have targeted an increase of 86 million tonne in freight traffic. By augmenting existing tracks through doubling and tripling, we will bring down the turnaround time of wagons from the current five days to three-and-a-half days.

This will itself give us additional rakes and automatically increase our capacity while (to carry freight) using the same amount of rolling stock.