The industry chambers considered the Railway Budget announced on Tuesday as pragmatic and balanced.
According to Chandrajit Banerjee, Director-General of Confederation of Indian Industry, the emphasis on financial viability and fiscal discipline of the Railways was reassuring.
“With fuel prices getting deregulated, linking of freight rates to increase in diesel prices is the correct direction to take,” he said.
The Railway Budget was in tune with the vision of the 12th Plan and reforms that the Government would like to take forward, said Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Targeted operating ratio improvement was a commendable feature. PPP has been budgeted at Rs 1 lakh crore but appears ambitious unless there is implementation focus, the chamber pointed out.
According to Ashok Aikat, President, Bharat Chamber of Commerce, the Railway Minister has adopted a conservative approach instead of a populist one for achieving an unparalleled growth and development of the Railways.
“The Budget, however, lacks innovative steps to improve the financial health of the Indian Railways. No concrete steps have been spelt out for aggressively undertaking the already belated progress of freight corridors. Besides, the hike in freight charges through introduction of dynamic fuel adjustment component at this juncture would add to inflationary pressures,” he said.
MCC Chamber of Commerce and Industry applauded the introduction of “customer-centric” initiatives like Automatic Ticket Vending Machines and coin operated ticket vending machines among others.
Indian Chamber of Commerce welcomed the move of setting up an Independent Rail Tariff Authority and the steps taken for the proposed completion of the Dumdum-Noapara Metro Railway project in Kolkata by March, and the construction of the East-west Corridor in Kolkata.
The linking of Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur with the railway network will be a key enabler in facilitating regional economic integration in the North-East States, which share a long international border, the chamber said.