DELHI: Railways today maintained that the merger of its budget with General Budget will have no adverse effect on its functioning and there will be positive outcome as the exchequer support to the national transporter will increase henceforth.
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu will not present a separate Rail Budget for the fiscal 2017-18 in the coming budget session in Parliament as the government has decided to do away with the year-long tradition of having it separately.
“Merger of Rail Budget has positive implications. It is very simple, no adverse implication and only positive implication,” Railway Board Chairman A K Mital said at the Edotors’ conference here.
He said the Railways will no longer pay dividends to the exchequer which is a gain for the organisation.
Railways receieve gross budgetary support from the Finance Ministry and in return pay dividends on it.
Comparing with other transporter sectors, he said investment in railways was much less than the road sector over the years and as a result rail sector was languishing for the lack of infrastructure development.
“The investment in road sector was twice more than the rail sector. But now we hope a holistic approach will be adopted by the government for the whole transport sector including railways, road, waterways and others,” he said.
