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Showing posts with label Implementation of our Budget promises. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Implementation of our Budget promises. Show all posts

Sunday, 21 June 2015

15:57

Indian Railway to hand over maintenance of 15 Electrical Multiple Unit (EMU) Train Sets to private player

Indian Railway to hand over maintenance of 15 Electrical Multiple Unit (EMU) Train Sets to private player

In a major shift, the Indian Railway has decided to hand over maintenance of Train Sets it has proposed to buy to the private player which would supply the rakes, a responsibility hitherto shouldered by the public transporter.

The railway has already floated global tenders for the Rs 2500 crore project involving procurement-cum-maintenance contract for 15 Electrical Multiple Unit (EMU) Train Sets.


A Train Set comprises coaches or rail cars where each coach is powered by a dedicated propulsion system, doing away with the need to have a locomotive haul the train.

According to the conditions in the bidding document, the selected bidder will manufacture and supply 15 EMU Train Sets comprising about 315 rail cars over a period of about 4-5 years and undertake maintenance thereafter for seven years.

The maintenance of a train involves checking of the braking system, wheel, bogies, ACs, electrical equipment, pantograph, electric motors and cleaning among others.

Till now, maintenance has been the preserve of the Indian Railway, while cleaning activities have been outsourced.

"It is for the first time that Indian Railway is allowing a private player to do the maintenance also which is paradigm shift," sources close to the development said.

However, operational responsibility for the Train Sets will be with the Railway.

The move has not gone down well with the All India Railwaymen's Federation. Its General Secretary Shiv Gopal Mishra said, "It is a clear cut privatisation move as maintenance job will be managed by the private player, thereby taking away a key area from the Railways." However, a senior official involved in the Train Set project strongly defended the bidding condition, saying "Since it is a new technology and Train Sets are going to be introduced for the first time, it will be the responsibility of the selected bidder to maintain it also. Railway staff will also be there to learn the maintenance system during the contractual period."

He said since the train's life is about 30 years and outsourcing will be only for seven years, the railways will maintain those after that.

According to him, the global tender for the big-ticket project is in accordance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious 'Make in India' initiative.

The railway aims at reducing the travel time between cities with the launch of Train Set service. Since the Train Set is equipped with quicker acceleration and deceleration system, it reduces travel time significantly.

While the successful bidder will import two Train Sets, the rest would be manufactured in the country, according to the bidding condition.

The project was announced by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu in the Rail Budget for the current year. 

Source :DNA

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10:13

Indian Railways need $ 500 billion to modernise the Rail system: Suresh Prabhu

Bangalore: Minister of Railways Suresh Prabhu on Saturday said India would need to invest 450 to 500 billion dollars over the next 15 years for the railways to perform more efficiently and be the leading transport sector in India.

Delivering the inaugural lecture at the Foundation Day of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) here, Prabhu said the Indian railways has a massive history of not getting any investment at all for decades. “Unlike China, India has just not made any investment in the railways. Investment is urgently required as railways would be environment-friendly and cost-effective. I have been here for six months and have begun positively by initiating and unlocking a lot of measures that will in three or four years’ time make the railways healthy and hopefully initiate the culture of investing in the railways,” Prabhu said.

The railways, he said, would be borrowing money to the tune of Rs 1,50,000 crore from LIC as the railways had no internal source of income other than freight and passenger fares and government budget. “Technology infusement and modernisation of the railways would be our focus now.

“Nearly 39 budget announcements have already been implemented. Customer preference policies are being introduced and a massive information technology dose would be administered to the railways,” he said.

E-catering has been announced and customers can get the food they want by booking on e-catering which enables one to order for private food. Also, base kitchens are being developed to serve quality and healthy food. The railways would be able to provide quality food in its normal kitchens provided people pay the actual price of the product.

Other measures to modernise railways are: mechanised laundries to maintain fresh linen, redesign of coaches, unlocking the land value of railways in partnership with private sector (PPP mode), implementation of recommendations of the Ratan Tata-led committee on railway modernisation, implementation of e-tendering process, an IT vision for railways, audit of energy, water, implementation of solar energy for railways and achieving carbon footprint.

The minister said if the idea of India as a unified country must succeed, its population needs to be integrated. “We will have to manage a population of 1.6 to 1.8 billion up from the current 1.25 billion.”

“To carry this load is not possible without logistics, particularly transportation. And railways is one of the answers, which now carries annually three million people. So the potential exists and there’s a huge market, Prabhu pointed out.

New station building

The minister inaugurated a new station building at the Bengaluru City station that would serve as the second entry from its Okalipuram entrance.

Built at a cost of Rs. 5.5 crore, it will house nine ticket counters, parking space in the basement and toilets, a cloak room, an AC lounge.

The building will also have a food court and fast food counters very soon. Suresh Prabhu also inaugurated new station building at KR Puram along with and foot-over bridges at Koppal, Almatti, and Alnavar and staff quarters at Hubballi by remote.

Prabhu pointed out the need for an alternative satellite terminal for the purpose of decongestant of the City.
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Thursday, 18 June 2015

20:26

Railway Minister rules out Privatization of Indian Railways

Railway Minister rules out Privatization of Indian Railways

Bodrum, Turkey: Railway minister Suresh Prabhu has ruled out privatization of the state-run transporter and has said that the government was already taking measures to improve the capabilities of the network.

A government-appointed panel headed by Niti Aayog member Bibek Debroy had suggested radical revamp of the state-run behemoth and backed the idea of private sector participation in some areas of the network. It also called for scrapping of the separate railway budget.

Rail unions have rejected the report and have said they will resort to agitation if the recommendations are accepted by the government.

“I don’t know where is the question of privatization. Many of the things that the Bibek Debroy committee report has said we are already implementing it. For example, in my budget speech, I talked about accounting reforms. Then we talked about regulator, it is part of the report. Delegation, which the report has talked, we have already delegated power the day I became minister,” Prabhu told on the sidelines of the G20 Sherpas meeting.

“They are talking about giving autonomy to zones. We signed MoU’s with two zones well before the report,” he said.

Prabhu said the government had not yet examined the report but added that a few things that the Debroy panel had suggested were already being implemented as they were “good practices”.

On the issue of funds for the railways, the minister said there were adequate funds. “Whatever money we need is available to us,” Prabhu said.

The minister has undertaken several measures to revamp the financial health of the railways and raise the level of investment to modernize the network. State-run agencies have pledged funds to revamp the railways while the government has said it is exploring ways to attract funds from global pension funds and other entities to fast track projects.
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Tuesday, 14 April 2015

08:15

We kept a Hawk-Eye in implementation of our Budget promises and timely Rollout of Projects: Suresh Prabhu

New Delhi: In his first interview after presenting the rail budget, railway minister Suresh Prabhu tells that he is keeping a hawk-eye on implementing the budget promises and has put in place a mechanism for timely rollout of projects in the state-run transporter (Courtesy: TOI)

What view has the ministry taken on the Bibek Debroy panel report?

Bibek Debroy and his colleagues submitted the report to me only on Thursday and according to them, this is a draft report and they said these are not final recommenda tions. So, we have to wait for the final report. I have suggested that they should also seek views from our employees and our unions because sometimes, the communication gap leads to misunderstand ing. They also agree with that.

Rail reforms are very difficult considering that railways has 13 lakh employees and they have rejected the report.

Wait for the final report. Debroy was telling me that some reports which have appeared as recommendations have some communication gap.

In the budget, you talked about attracting pension funds for railway infrastructure. What is the progress?

First, money is not the only mission of railways. Railways is not a bank. We need money only to meet our capital requirement which we estimated at Rs 8.50 lakh crore over five years. Right now, we don’t need money for the current year. We have already got Rs 1.50 lakh crore from LIC. We are in talks with World Bank, IFC and ADB for more money. In our budget, we talked about Rs 1.50 lakh crore for station development which is completely coming out of private sector so I don’t have to arrange money for that. Then, there are two untapped sources.

One is tax free bonds which the FM has talked about in his budget speech for the first time, and the second is India Infrastructure Development Fund which aims to raise Rs 2 lakh crore in five years. So, we can draw around 50% of this amount. Plus, we have al ready signed an agreement with coal ministry and are in talks with other ministries and NTPC so that (freight) customers can pool in money. Plus, finance ministry has been giving money regularly, around Rs 60,000 crore per year, so that itself will become Rs 3 lakh crore in five years. All the money crore in five years. A put together is more than what is required.

Also, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and other options are there. We are in talks with Japanese, Chinese and Canadian pension funds. We can use these resources for development of other infrastructure

Are you talking about the infrastructure fund that finance minister mentioned?

In Japan, the rate of interest is very , very low, in fact, more or less flat for a long time because the economy is not growing, inflation is very low. So, they are facing a double whammy -low inflation and low demand. They need to invest outside and this meets our require ment. Look at China’s sovereign wealth fund. It is worth $4 trillion.We are offering something which is not soft financing or bilateral help. This is purely on commercial consideration for investment into another market which benefits them. Canada has the same problem, $2 trillion of pension fund which is more than the size of its economy. They have to invest out side.Fund availability for India’s infrastructure is going to be immense.

I can tell you something interesting on what we can do. We have public sector units which have very good balancesheets. When they execute a project, the advantage is they will be able to raise resources on their own balance-sheet. They can borrow from their own balance-sheet and they can leverage.

What is the progress on decongesting the network?

Today is the 10th day of the new financial year and I am very happy to say that each and every budget announcement has been made into actionable points and we have already reviewed it three times. We are trying to monitor the implementation at three levels. I have asked my colleague minister (MoS) to monitor it regularly. Chairman of railway board has been directed to take feedback from board members every 15 days. Another layer is online monitoring. Two kinds of monitoring, one is for project implementation, other is for non project implementation such as food quality. For projects, it will go through various phases of approvals. Our target is to get work started in September. We are targeting implementation but completion will not happen before three years.

Do you think it is possible to fulfill these big ideas under the current railway board structure?

Each and every idea in the budget speech is under implementation and through the same system. In the last 10 days, I have had meetings with five zones which account for 70% of the freight traffic. In the last 10 days, I visited 10 states and met general managers, divisional railway managers. They are extremely excited to work on these ideas. I don’t see any issue in terms of railway board and, in fact, railway board chairman is monitoring it.
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