Why it is important for Railways to be competitive
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The Railway portion of the Budget is on expected lines – completion of electrification and dedicated freight corridors (DFC), survey for new dedicated freight corridors, among others. However, monetisation of Eastern and Western DFC after its completion is interesting.
Even after the commissioning of these corridors, it will take a long time for revenue streams to stabilise and operational expenses to crystalise.
Therefore, any effort to monetise DFC assets earlier than that will need assurances with regard to traffic and tariff. Railways’ track record about PPP and asset monetisation has not been very encouraging as even station re-development, which has proved to be revenue generator globally for railway systems, has not made any progress during the last six years. Therefore, monetisation of even brownfield assets will not happen unless the processes and business model are revamped.