Going places

New Delhi, Feb. 26: The railways has decided to farm out more orders to the wagon makers who are pleased by the largesse but feel there is potential for much more.

The ministry has increased the total number of wagons that it intends to buy from the manufacturers from 20,000 to 23,300 for fiscal 2005-06. The railways has raised the target for spending on wagon purchases to Rs 796.36 crore in 2005-06 from Rs 480.76 crore in the revised estimates for 2004-05.

?The sale of wagons has increased substantially in comparison to last year,? said S. S. Chatterjee, president of Jessop and Company.

Chatterjee said the railways had recently floated a tender seeking nearly 10,000 wagons. 'This is a boost to the wagon industry', he said.

Pawan K. Ruia, chairman of Jessop & Co, said the amendment in own-your-wagon scheme would now provide the users committed rakes. 'This is expected to generate a lot of demand from the private sector,' he said.

The wagon makers, however, feel the railways could have done better. 'In the immediate past three years, the procurement by railways has averaged a total of only 13,000 wagons. This has fallen far short of meeting their requirement even on replacement account, let alone the additional requirement for additional traffic,' said Ramesh Maheshwari, president and CEO of Texmaco, the biggest wagon manufacturer in the country.

The industry today also welcomed the announcement of the new 'wagon investment scheme' to encourage private and public partnership. The industry has got an additional order of 3300 wagons for the year 2005-06.

The railway minister today also addressed the long-standing plea of the industry by seeking to introduce aluminium and double-decker wagons. These are used extensively overseas and are expected to enhance the capacity considerably.

Laloo Yadav said in his budget speech, ?The tare weight of the wagons currently being used limits the freight loading of the railways'.

In an attempt to increase the loading capacity of each train by four tonnes, the ministry proposed to introduce lightweight, corrosion resistant aluminium wagons.

Railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav announcing the budget said there has been a significant increase in the freight loading, due to improvement in wagon turnaround.

'It is expected to improve from seven last year to about six in year 2004-05', he added. He hoped to bring down the wagon turnaround time to five days in the near future.

A major highlight of the budget is its thrust to regain the share of freight market and augment the revenue carrying freight loading.

Maheshwari said it would be difficult for the railways to meet the enhanced target of 635 million tonnes for fiscal 2005-06 until it substantially increased the number of wagons.

The main source of revenue for the railways is through freight, which accounts for only 66 per cent of the revenues, he said.

'It is ironical that shortage of wagons bottlenecking the movement and idle capacity have continued to co-exist over the years,' said Maheshwari.

The wagon industry has welcomed the Railways budget provision of the public-private partnership in the procurement of wagon even as it expressed concern over low level of sourcing by the railways.