Mumbai:
The Railways plans to invest Rs300,000 crore ($65.8
billion) for developing freight corridors, container
trains and upgrading stations by 2012. The Railways
will seek increased private participation and allow
private companies to run freight trains and improve
facilities at railway stations, J P Batra, chairman
of the Railway Board, told an infrastructure conference
in New Delhi.
The
Railways had launched a massive Rs22,000 crore project
last month for constructing freight-only lines aimed
at improving infrastructure. Construction of dedicated
freight corridors will allow quicker movement of export
consignments and allow companies like Indian Oil Corporation
to move gasoline and diesel faster to consumers across
the country.
The
project, the Railways' biggest since Independence, will
add over 10,000km of tracks connecting the country's
financial hub of Mumbai on the West coast and Kolkata
in the East coast to the capital New Delhi.
The
Railways has also revised estimates of freight traffic
to 750 million tonnes this year against the earlier
estimate of 726 million tonnes, Batra said. Passenger
traffic is expected to rise to 6.5 billion people this
financial year ending March 31, 2007, compared with
six billion people in the previous year, he added.
The
Railways, meanwhile, expects a surplus of Rs20,000 crore
($4.4 billion) this fiscal against a surplus of Rs13,600
crore last year, he said.
The
Railways has already issued licences to 14 companies
to run private trains, ending the monopoly of the government
in the business.
The
government is trying to remove infrastructure bottlenecks
so that
the pace of economic growth can be accelerated to as
much as 10 per cent in the next decade from an average
six per cent since 1980.
|