The Centre has approved an capital expenditure (capex) outlay of Rs 1,61,042 crore for Indian Railways (IR)in this year’s Union budget (FY21).
Union Minister for Railways Piyush Goyal stated this in a written reply to a Parliament question on Wednesday.
He said the outlay included a gross budgetary support (including Nirbhaya fund) of Rs 70,250 crore. Internal resources and extra budgetary resources of Rs. 90,792 crore were also a part of the FY21 capex, he added.
During FY21, Rs. 35,965 crore has been set aside for new lines, gauge conversion and doubling of rail lines. This would be funded through a mix of gross budgetary support and and Institutional Financing from Extra Budgetary Resources, the minister said.
Project details
Presently, IR has taken up 498 Railway projects of 49,069 km length costing Rs. 6.75 lakh crore. These projects are in different stages of planning/sanction/execution.
Of this, 8,979 km length has been commissioned at a cost of Rs. 1.53 lakh crore as on March, 2019.
Projects have been prioritized into 58 super critical projects, 68 critical projects and 130 other throughput enhancement projects based on a thorough review of IR’s operational requirement.
Presently, the balance length of super critical projects is 2347 km, for critical projects the length is 5676 km of while other doubling projects constitute a route length of 9703 Km.
Incentives
To ensure project completion ahead of deadlines, IR has incorporated a bonus clause in its contracts for contractors.
For capacity enhancement projects, institutional financing has been arranged, thereby increasing IR’s capacity to fund them.