Indian Railways (IR) plans to garner revenue of ₹1,84,820 crore in FY17, according to Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu.
Presenting the Railway Budget in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, the Minister said that IR would be able to save costs worth ₹8,720 crore as per estimates.
A capital expenditure of ₹1.21 lakh crore has been envisaged for the next fiscal.
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Observing that payouts for the 7th pay commission and the performance-linked incentives as challenges, Suresh Prabhu said that IR was geared to provide passenger reservation on demand, introduce a freight train time-table, eliminate all unmanned level crossings, implement zero direct discharge of human waste, besides increasing the average speed of passenger trains to 80 km per hour and freighters to 50 kmph by the year 2020.
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IR has identified 44 projects of 5,300 km for implementation at an investment of over ₹92,000 crore. It plans to construct seven km of broad gauge track per day next fiscal and would increase this rate to 13 km per day in FY17 and to 19 km per day in FY 19, Suresh Prabhu added.