Measures Taken by Railways to Augment Earnings and Contain Expenditure

Steps taken to augment resources of Railways to increase earnings:

·         Continuous efforts to capture more and more traffic.

·         Creation of additional capacity and optimum utilization of the existing one.

·         Improved throughput through increased productivity and efficiency.

·         Reduction in wagon turn around time.

·         Simplification and rationalization of tariff.

·         Market responsive and dynamic tariff policies.

·         Customer oriented freight policies.

·         Introduction of engine on load scheme.

·         Terminal incentive schemes.

·         Discount on incremental traffic in empty flow direction and lean season.

·         Introduction of new trains, increase in frequency and extension to existing trains to capture more passenger traffic.

·          Extension of Passenger Reservation System and Unreserved Ticketing System facilities to more and more location.

·         Introduction of passenger profile management system.

·         Deployment of additional coaches in patronized trains.

·         Introduction of premium parcel service.

·         Leasing of Parcel space in trains.

·         Introduction of Liberalized Wagon Investment Schemes.

·         Rail Side Warehousing Terminals through Public Private Partnership.

Steps taken to Control over Expenditure:

·         Constant endeavour on the part of the Railways to avoid wasteful expenditure.

·         Control the growth of non-plan expenditure.

·         Prioritization of expenditure on works for better use of available resources.

·         Improving staff productivity by better man-power planning.

·         Better Asset utilization.

·         Improvement in inventory management.

·         Optimizing the fuel consumption.

·         Tight control over expenditure in areas such as contractual payment, overtime allowance, purchase of material etc.

·         Austerity and economy measures in areas such as hospitality, publicity, advertisements, inaugural ceremonies, seminars and workshops, contingent office expenses etc.

·         Implementation of the guidelines on expenditure control & management circulated by the Ministry of Finance on the Railways also.

·         Rigorous monitoring of expenditure with respect to the monthly budget proportions.

            This information was given by the Minister of State for Railways Shri Manoj Sinha in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.