Video: All The Good Things In The 2016 Railway Budget

The Key takeaways from today’s (25 Feb) railway budget.

One, there is a shift from mere announcements of new lines and projects in favour of execution. This is very important from the view of improving railway finances.

Two, like Vajpayee’s Golden Quadrilateral highways project, Narendra Modi is trying to do a Diamond Quadrilateral in railways.

Three, an important shift promised is zero-base budgeting. This is a major announcement, which means that projects and costs will be repeatedly evaluated every year (or more frequently) to ensure that they continue to make economic sense.

Four, Suresh Prabhu’s revenue and other targets are kept at reasonable levels.

Five, the focus on investment remains. The plan for next year is Rs 1.21 lakh crore – up a healthy 21 percent from this year’s actual budget, which was achieved in full.

Six, freight may actually see selective rate cuts in order to improve the railways’ share of cargoes, which have been continuously going down for years now.

Seven, while fares for the aam aadmi will not go up much, Prabhu is making efforts to offer differentiated services to make some passenger services cost-neutral, if not profitable

Eight, Prabhu also wants to expand revenues from non-fare sources like monetising land banks along tracks, advertising, use of its customer database to cross-sell products, and bringing in private funds for station development and train branding.

See here for a more detailed take.