Slack growth of infrastructure is the main challenge: Suresh Prabhu

Suresh Prabhu, Union Minister of Railways, said that here on Sunday that even though the investment in railways has been stepped up by three times in the last two years as compared to the last decade, the sector is still suffering from lack of investment. Mr. Prabhu was addressing the 89th Annual General Meeting of FICCI.

He said the Government at present is not only relying on the traditional budgetary sources for investment, but other external sources. While public investment was a key source of investment, the railways has opened various sectors for private participation. 

The areas include manufacturing of diesel and electric locomotives, railway station redevelopment, integrated multimodal transport system. It has initiated railway station redevelopment and different models are implemented in Habibgunj, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar and Surat.Mr. Prabhu specified that one of the significant steps by railways is bringing structural changes in management for faster decision making process and will bring accountability in railway operations. 

Talking about the Rail Vikas Shivir, he said that 1.3 million employees shared innovative ideas in rail operations and advanced a roadmap for substantial progress of the sector. Emphasizing the challenges in the sector, the Minister said that railways is suffering from lack of investment, customer service, capacity augmentation, freight and timely service. 

The biggest impediment for growth is lack of infrastructure and the government is continuously working in a positive direction, he added.