Budget 2019: Indian Railways has received the highest-ever outlay for capital expenditure in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's maiden Budget tabled today in Parliament. She proposed the highest-ever outlay of Rs 1.60 lakh crore and a budgetary allocation of Rs 65,837 crore for the national transporter.

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Last year, the outlay for the railways was Rs 1.48 lakh crore while the Budget allocation was Rs 55,088 crore. The Budget 2019 has allocated funds of Rs 7,255 crore for construction of new lines, Rs 2,200 crore for gauge conversion, Rs 700 crore for doubling, Rs 6,114.82 crore for rolling stock and Rs 1,750 crore for signalling and telecom.

Notably, the allocations have remained the same as in the interim budget in February, which was presented by the then Finance Minister Piyush Goyal, who is also the Railway Minister. 

Presenting the Budget in the Lok Sabha, Sitharaman stressed that railway infrastructure would need an investment of Rs 50 lakh crore between 2018 and 2030 and proposed that a public private partnership (PPP) be used to unleash faster development and delivery of passenger freight services for railway projects to boost connectivity.

Sitharaman said: "It is estimated that railway infrastructure would need an investment of Rs 50 lakh crore between 2018 to 2030. Given that the capital expenditure outlays of railways is between Rs 1.5 to 1.6 lakh crore per annum, completing even all sanctioned projects would take decades."

According to the FM, "It is therefore proposed to use public-private partnership to unleash faster development and completion of tracks and rolling stock manufacture and also delivery of passenger freight services." 

She said the national transporter will be encouraged to invest more in suburban network through special purpose vehicle structures such as the Rapid Regional Transport System. Such a system is proposed on the Delhi-Meerut route.

"I propose to enhance the metro railway initiative by encouraging more public private partnership initiatives and ensuring completion of sanctioned works while supporting transit oriented development to ensure commercial activity around transit hubs," she said, adding that Railway stations modernisation will also be launched this year.

Developing passenger amenities seemed to to be the focus of the government with the planned expenditure on that count being allocated Rs 3,422.57 crore which is an additional outlay of around Rs 1,000 crore for the comfort of rail passengers.

Railways headache would remain is the revenue expenditure which includes an estimated salary payout of Rs 86,554.31 crore, about Rs 14,000 crore more than last year.

The Budget estimates also allocated Rs 267.64 cr for Nirbhaya Fund including provision of Rs 250 crore for Integrated Emergency Response Management System (IERM) (Video Surveillance System) and Rs 17.64 cr for Konkan Railway Corporation Ltd.

Estimates under Gross Traffic Receipts for the year 2019-20 have been placed at Rs 2,16,675 crore involving an increase of Rs 19,961 crore over the Revised Estimates 2018-19.