10:49 PM
New Delhi,
June 14, 2015
Make train services viable: panel
Improving accountability, decentralising power and
setting up an independent regulator are the key elements for the
restructuring of Indian Railways, NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy says.
The
panel on restructuring of the Indian Railways, headed by Mr. Debroy,
submitted its final report on Friday. The committee has set a five-year
timeframe for implementing its recommendations and has suggested doing
away with the Railway Budget, Dr. Debroy told
The Hindu
in an exclusive interview.
“Without commercial
accounting, I do not even know what the rate of return on the projects
is. This is not just about attracting private capital flows, but even
with government and Railways, you need to know what your return is. So
if I am borrowing the funds at, say, 7 per cent, I need to know what the
return on projects is … at the end of it all, I need to do the
cost-benefit analysis of how much it costs to run a train and is that
train viable. You cannot do that without commercial accounting,” he
said.
He said even if the projects were taken up for
fulfilling social objectives, they needed to be accounted for and
clearly quantified and funded out of the Budget. “Because, if we have
the Railway Budget, the expectation of every MP is that give me a train
for my constituency. And you are setting up a regulator, which is going
to recommend or set the tariffs. So there is no purpose to the Budget,”
he said.
On the independent regulator, Mr. Debroy
said the recommendation was to set it up statutorily and not
executively. “Why statutorily? Because we want the regulator to be
independent and we want the regulator to be accountable to Parliament.
We want the regulator to be outside the clutches of Rail Bhavan with a
separate budget. The Ministry would set only policies.”
.jpg)
.jpg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment