Q: There has been criticism of your plan to increase freight rates for some commodities...
A: What we have done is, we have fixed a target for quantity. Quantity is the real reason for which we are going to increase it because the economy is picking up. There are so many small changes we are doing so that traffic can pick up. The amount of money that we will get is hardly significant as we will see increase somewhere, while we will lose in some other areas because of the rationalization. A substantial part of the freight revenue is coming due to the stiff targets that we have given to different zones. This must have been done in the budget so many times.
Q: Was an increase necessary given that diesel price has come down?
A: There has definitely been some gain due to lower oil price but it is not so substantial. Actually, fuel bill has gone up due to cost of electricity. So, we are for the first time making an effort to reduce the cost of energy. We are buying electricity at Rs 7 (a unit). I have worked on reducing this and so savings of minimum Rs 3,000 crore will come due to that reason. We are also working on reducing the cost of diesel substantially but that is still a work in progress.
Rail Budget 2015: Find all stories here
Passenger-friendly measures in Suresh Prabhu's rail budget 2015
Q: But what about passenger fares?
A: It would have been unfair to increase fares. We could not have asked commuters to pay more because we are incurring losses.
Q: How much investment will come due to partnerships with states and private sector?
A: A substantial amount. All over the world, we raise money like this. What we are talking about is pittance. Is Rs 70,000-80,000 crore big money? In railways, we only think that passenger fares should not increase and gross budgetary support (GBS) should increase. And where do you get GBS from? We borrow Rs 8-9 lakh crore in the market at 11-12% and people think that money should be given to railways and that's the only way railways should run. This (partnerships) is something which is project based and what we have budgeted for is an understatement. There is one financial institution which is ready to give us Rs 20,000 crore and there are many more. So, Rs 1 lakh crore will come from there only. The amount of money required by railways is mammoth and it is not very responsible for me to expect everything from the general budget. The debt-equity ratio of all our PSUs is so low that they can raise four or five times more money. There is possibility of getting money from non-traditional sources such as pension fund. Money is not something that we need to worry about. What we should worry about is projects. We have taken all the low-hanging fruits such as doubling or tripling of lines and the money will come immediately.
Q: Why did you decide not to sell railway land?
A: It is impossible to sell railway land. First of all, railways is attempting to making stations where it is unable to prove the title. So, is it going to be easy? We will unnecessarily get into controversy. I am instead monetizing it and will get more money.
Q: You spoke of modernization of stations. Given the experience with airports where users ended up paying much more, what are the safeguards that you are going to build?
A: All that is a matter of detail but we will put it through a bidding process. The customer has nothing to lose. Unlike airports, where revenue comes from user charges as airlines have to pay landing charges, nobody pays user charges to enter the station.
Q: You have not announced trains or new railway lines...
A: Is it the job of the railway budget to do that? This is the biggest reform. De-politicization of railways will begin with this budget. What is important is the policy instead of project announcements. Nearly 90% of the speech was earlier devoted to new trains and new projects. One of my predecessors announced stoppage of trains running into several pages.
Q: You have spoken of train sets. Which routes will they run on?
A: It will start in two years. The routes will be the high density routes.
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