Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has called for allowing private sector participation in development of railway infrastructure and maintenance, and in commercial utilisation of assets.
The possible areas of private sector participation could be leasing out railway stations or terminals, and commercial exploitation of the railway land and air space.
In an agenda for the Indian Railways, the industry chamber has also said a clear-cut long-term procurement policy should be evolved with removal of cross-subsidisation.
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"There is enormous scope for the railways to outsource activities, including maintenance of information kiosks, catering, cleaning, sanitation, conveniences, bed roll, booking, inquiry and security. The Indian Railways maintain 6,984 railway stations, besides having huge surplus land," CII deputy director-general M Roy told Business Standard.
Roy pointed out that the railways had been losing goods traffic to road transport, despite being more economical and environment-friendly in comparison with road transport.
According to Roy, 60 per cent of the goods traffic is now carried by road transport. Earlier, nearly 75 per cent of the share went to the railways.
Other points in the agenda are:
l Introduction of state-of-the-art technology, particularly in areas of signalling, rolling stock and safety measures
l Information technology vision and policy for Indian Railways, which can spell out the IT requirements of the railways for 10 years;
l Improvement of rail infrastructure at ports and its linkages to the hinterland
l Making railways financially self-supporting
l Steps to increase share of railways in total traffic, particularly freight, by identifying the service and tariff sectors
l Introduction of value-added services to capture high-value and low volume traffic
l Innovative marketing efforts to attract `other goods' rather than depending on core sectors
l Extending route networks
l Concentration on generation of additional capacity on high-density corridors.