Rail Budget aims at long-term turnaround in railways: Nalin Jain, GE Transport

In a chat with ET Now, Nalin Jain, President & CEO, GE Transport, talks about this year's Rail Budget. Excerpts:

ET Now: What has been your first take away from the Rail Budget? The steel, power, coal and cement sectors are not that happy. What are your thoughts?

Nalin Jain: I will first focus on what this Rail Budget is all about. If you look at the passenger segment, the focus has been not introducing new trains and increasing services, but rather on improved services. So, there is a lot of focus on cleanliness, on providing better facilities at railway stations, catering, ticketing, etc.

Introducing technology, using mobile ticketing and stuff like that will improve passenger experience and customer experience. That is the passenger side of the budget.

On the freight side, Prabhu has set an ambitious target of 1.5 billion tonnes of haulage. He has talked about a lot of near-term actions. Those are possible in the near term — things like tripling or quadrupling of the existing tracks, introducing higher horsepower locomotives, using distributed power to improve efficiency of freight trains, extending loop lines, etc.

If you look at all these initiatives, you see a long-term picture there. There are also some attainable short-term targets. I see those as significant positives. It's because there is no point in having an inefficient infrastructure and an inefficient railway freight system even at the lowest cost.

The cost of carrying those goods and inventory is much more than the 5% or 6% hike that the budget has proposed. So my view is that if the railways can deliver efficiency, can deliver goods in time, it will still remain far more cost efficient when you compare it with road transportation.