Railway Budget 2024: 3 major corridors announced; capital outlay increased to ₹2.55 lakh cr

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while announcing this year's Interim Budget 2024-25 in Parliament today, said three major economic railway corridor programmes will be implemented in the country. These are energy, mineral and cement corridors, port connectivity corridors, and high-traffic density corridors.

"The projects have been identified under the PM Gati Shakti for enabling multi-modal connectivity. They will improve logistics efficiency and reduce cost," the FM says in Parliament.

The FM adds that the resultant decongestion of the "high-traffic corridors" will also help in improving the operations of passenger trains, resulting in safety and higher travel speed for passengers. "Together with dedicated freight corridors, these three economic corridor programmes will accelerate our GDP growth and reduce logistic costs."

The government has also increased reduced capital outlay for the Ministry of Railways to ₹2.55 lakh crore this time as compared to ₹2.40 lakh crore in FY2023-24. Given the government’s impetus on building railway infrastructure, analysts were expecting the budgetary allocation for railways to cross ₹3 lakh crore this budget.

Additionally, the FM also announced that 40,000 normal rail bogies will be converted to the "Vande Bharat" standards to enhance the safety, convenience and comfort of passengers.

Railways are the principal departmentally-run commercial undertaking of the government. The budget of the Ministry of Railways and the demands for grants relating to it are presented to Parliament together with the Union Budget from the financial year 2017-18 onwards.

In her last year's budget, the FM had announced the formation of a newly established Infrastructure Finance Secretariat, which was proposed to assist stakeholders with more private investment in infrastructure, including railways, and roads. The FM had provided a capital outlay of ₹2.40 lakh crore for the Railways, which was the highest ever outlay; 9 times the outlay made in 2013-14.

This allocation was over 30 times the budgetary support proposed in the financial year 2004-05, 8 times over 2013-14, and 75% higher over the previous year. The railway sector was allotted ₹8,000 crore in FY05, ₹29,055 crore in FY14, and ₹1.37 lakh crore in the previous fiscal.