ESS CONFERENCE
| Railway Board Chairman Ravindra Kumar Singh, who took charge on August 1, 2003, is often termed as a chairman on the fast track to reform. |
| In the customary press conference after the interim Rail Budget, he was quick with his responses, for a volley of questions. No wonder the conference came to a conclusion in just about 30 minutes. Excerpts: |
| Is the freight traffic target of 570 million tonnes achieveable? |
| In the current fiscal itself, we expect to add another 10 million tonnes of loading and exceed the budget estimate of 540 million tonnes. For the next fiscal, we are targetting 570 million tonnes, which is an increase of only 3.63 per cent. |
| The interim budget seems to be a populist exercise with an eye on the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls. |
| We take approval for four months to ensure that the on-going projects continue and the regular expenditure is met. The budget was anyway scheduled to be presented in February and the preparation was on and targets were being set accordingly. |
| How would the funding for the Rs 20,000 crore Remote Area Rail Sampark Yojana be done? |
| Funds for the Rail Sampark Yojana would be met through additional budgetary support, multilateral funding and non-budgetary initiatives. |
| It will be spread over five years entailing expenditure of Rs 4,000 crore a year. This has not been provided for in the vote-on-account. It is a new scheme and the details are being worked out. |
| While there are various schemes that will result in an increase in expenditure, there does not seem to be any major efforts towards improving the Railways |
