The National Assembly's Standing Committee on Railways approved a proposal of over Rs 40 billion allocation for development projects of the Pakistan Railways under the Public Sector Development Programme in the June budget. "The 98 percent of the proposed budget will be spent on completing ongoing schemes while only two percent has been proposed for the initiation of the new schemes during the next financial year," Chairman, Standing Committee on Railways Syed Naveed Qamar told reporters after a long debate on the railway budget demands for the next financial year that was held at the headquarters of the organisation on Friday.
Federal Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique, members of the National Assembly and railway's high-ups also attended the meeting. "Today's meeting discussed two-point agenda including the proposed allocation for railway in the budget and an update by the National Accountability Bureau on under-investigation railway-linked cases," Naveed Qamar said
He also said the Rs 46.42 billion budget proposal would be sent to the Finance Ministry for approval to include it the national fiscal budget. In his address, Minister Khawaja Rafique said the proposed budget-share for the next financial year focused more on the current projects to allow railway to get on with completing them rather than launching just new ones while letting the old ones undone. He also talked about an agreement on e-ticketing to be signed by June this year that would allow the railway to go e-ticketing in one year's time.
"Tickets will be available to commuters on the Internet and on different mobile services being run in the country," he said adding that his Ministry recently upgraded many trains including the Karkoram, Musa Pak and Multan Express and now it was the turn of the Pakistan Express to be upgraded by June.
He said that six more trains would be upgraded in the next financial year and all trains would be upgraded during the next three to four years. He said that renovation work of the Bahawalpur train would begin shortly and all 31 railway stations would be renovated.
In response to a question on railway's deficit, the minister claimed the railway curtailed its deficit during the last financial year. He said that a government-announced pension package was main cause of affecting these efforts. "We are still hopeful to keep the deficit under Rs 25 billion during the current financial year," he pledged.
About an allocation under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the minister said his team during talks with Chinese had been told that the railway would get up to $8 billion, but what would be the share of the Chinese in this amount was yet to be ascertained. However, he claimed interest on Chinese investment would be less than 2%.
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