The railways will spend over Rs 73,000 crore on safety out of the Rs 1.48 lakh crore capital expenditure earmakred for it in 2018-19 union budget, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.
Apart from the Rs 73,065 crore from the budget, the railways will use Rs 20,000 crore from its rail safety fund that was created last year, he said.
"It will comprise Rs 5,000 crore from the capital (budgetary support), Rs 10,000 crore from railway safety fund received as Railways' share from central road fund and Rs 5,000 crore from railways' revenue," the minister said.
Goyal also said that the railways will get a gross budgetary support of Rs 55,000 crore from the Finance Ministry.
"The railways will get budgetary support of Rs 53,060 crore from the Finance Ministry. The government has provided Rs 1,940 crore towards reimbursement of losses on operation of strategic lines and Rs 88 crore towards reimbursement of operation cost of e-ticketing to the IRCTC," he said.
Goyal also said that the Indian Railways will generate Rs 11,500 crore from the internal resources while it shall raise Rs 28,500 crore from IRFC and Rs 26,440 crore from Institutional Finance (LIC) to support.
"It will also generate investment of Rs 27,000 crore from the public private partnership in the projects," he said.
Speaking about the Rs 1.48 lakh crore capex in the railways, Goyal said, "The government is drastically scaling up investments by almost three times to Rs 1,46,500 crore in 2018-19 as against Rs 53,989 crore in 2013-14."
"This is 22 per cent higher than 2017-18," he said.
In 2017-18 Union Budget, the total capex of Railways was pegged at Rs 1,31,000 crore.
According to the railway ministry officials the operating ratio of 2018-19 is estimated at 92.8 per cent as against 96 per cent in 2017-18. The minister also said that the first set of the modern train announced by Jaitley would be commissioned in September this year.
--IANS
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