Indian
Railways has always been the lifeline of the country, connect- ing every nook
and corner with railway tracks crisscrossing its length and breadth. Usually,
attracting media attention for all the wrong reasons like disasters and accidents,
Indian Railways, the largest in the world, recently hogged the limelight for raking
in whopping profits to the tune of Rs. 20,000 cr for the year 2006-07! This was
declared by the Honorable Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav, while presenting
the railway budget. Apart from looking back at a very successful past year, the
budget also looked to the future. Indian Railways is now at the crossroads. It
has to take the direction that would help India achieve the growth targets and
become an efficient logistics provider.
In
the past, the railway budget was always the repetition of a disaster story of
mounting losses and promise by the respective minister to do better next year.
But for a change, Indian Railways, in the past couple of years, is showing signs
of a turnaround under the leadership of the present Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad
Yadav. For the year 2006-07, the Indian Railways amassed a profit of Rs. 20,000
cr, beating the previous budget estimate by a substantial margin. This impressive
performance comes on the heels of a 36.6% jump in net revenues over the past year
even though there was a marginal increase in the operational costs, which was
mainly due to the rising fuel prices. The operating margin was at 78.7% this year
which declined from about 91% over the last year. Capital Charge which is equal
to the Return on Capital Employed in railway parlance also rose impressively to
19.6% this year when compared to 8.9% last year.
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