Title - Rail Bhavan mandarins worried over resource generation

The Rail Bhavan is humming with activity these days, with the top brass busy working on the Rail Budget for 2013-14. As the pre-Budget exercises go on, the policy makers face the biggest challenge of how to generate additional resources to meet the projected expenditure. If the current situation is any indication, the Railways’ freight traffic target of 1,025 million tonnes (MT) for the current fiscal is unlikely to be met.The indication is that the final figure may be around 1,010 MT. Sceptics will put it at an even lower level. Till December, the throughput was 735 MT as compared to the pro-rata target of 748 MT, thus registering a shortfall of 13 MT. After the initial setback, the coal traffic, accounting for 45-46 per cent of the total traffic of Indian Railways, has picked up but the throughputs of other items such as iron ore, cement, finished steel, fertilisers and others, leave much to be desired. What could be the freight traffic target for 2013-14 in such a situation? Not more than 1,050 MT, according to one estimate.