Tuesday, March 04, 2025 | 07:10 PM ISTहिंदी में पढें
Business Standard
Notification Icon
userprofile IconSearch

Budget merger can't hide rot in Railway finances

Railways' increased dependence on govt for its capital outlay has put the Union budget under stress

Graph
Premium

Graph

Bhupesh Bhandari
Its annual budget, followed extensively over decades for announcements of new train services, may have folded into the Union budget, but that couldn’t hide the rot in the Railways’ finances. It could be seen in the operating ratio (the extent to which total working expenses are covered by the gross traffic revenue) which deteriorated from 90.5 per cent in 2015-16 to 94.9 per cent in 2016-17 (revised estimates) and is projected to improve marginally to 94.6 per cent in 2017-18.

The situation could have been worse but for some accounting jugglery. In 2017-18, as the budgetary support from the

What you get on BS Premium?

  • Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app.
  • Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them.
  • Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006.
  • Preferential invites to Business Standard events.
  • Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more.
VIEW ALL FAQs

Need More Information - write to us at assist@bsmail.in