Confederation of Industries calls the railway budget as balanced

New Delhi, Mar 14 (ANI): The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) on Wednesday called the Rail Budget presented by Railways Minister Dinesh Trivedi as balanced.

Addressing a news conference here on Wednesday members of the CII praised Trivedi for his efforts.

Highlighting the main points of the railway budget, CII's Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said that the budget focused on safety consolidation.

"We found it to be a very good balancing act by the Railway Minister in his first maiden budget. I think what he has done very adequately is to focus on safety consolidation and also it focuses on improving the operating ratio.

"These are some of the real features that one saw across the budget. A good decision to really look at the fares and he has also balanced it very well and very clearly he has also looked at the freights and not tinker around with it," he said.

Banerjee hailed the budget for proposing the modernization of the railways with an aim to increase its efficiency.

"The type of outlay one is seeing, one billion rupees of investment plans for this fiscal, I think that is the highest ever and that is something which he has done very adequately. Modernisation plan I think he has seen through very well. And one of the things, which we would really like to mention is that he has done is in terms of improving efficiency which is on bringing down the operating ratio from over 90 percent to a target of 74 percent by the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan," said Banerjee.

Banerjee lauded Trivedi for the formation of a committee to look into modernization and resource mobilization under technocrat Sam Pitroda.

"All in all I would say that one has really looked into balancing the budget pretty well and he has taken some very bold measures in the spread of the budget. And two other features that we saw are the creation of the two committees. The one under Mr. Sam Pitroda and the other under Mr. Kakodkar. I think these are very welcome features that he has placed in the budget that he has placed today," he said.

Indian Railways has 114,500 kilometres of total track over a route of 65,000 kilometres and 7,500 stations. It has the world's fourth largest railway network after those of the United States, Russia and China.

The railways carry over 30 million passengers and 2.8 million tons of freight daily. It is the world's second largest commercial or utility employer, by number of employees, with more than 1.36 million employees.

But decades of low investment, a patchy safety record and frequent delays has made India fall behind China in building a network fit for Asia's third-largest economy. (ANI)