The interim budget presented today announced an increase of budgetary allocation for railways from Rs 26,000 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 29,000 crore in 2014-15.

“Railways need to mobilise huge resources through market burrowing and private public partnership schemes. It is proposed to identify new instruments and new mechanism to raise funds for railway projects,” Finance Minister P Chidambaram said.

Railways is getting total Rs 30,223 crore as gross budgetary support for the fiscal 2014-15 which includes Rs 1,223 crore as fuel cess.

Describing the increase in passenger fares of trains in the recent past as one of the “path-braking” decisions, Chidambaram said government took several notable decisions including some that were “described as courageous and long overdue“.

Railways fares were rationalised for the first time in a decade, Chidambaram said in his Interim Budget 2014-15 speech.

The then Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal had effected an across-the-board hike in fares of all classes from midnight of January 21, 2013 to net an additional Rs 6,600 crore a year, the first such increase in a decade.

Later on the railways further increased passenger fares by up to 2 per cent across classes, except for the unreserved section, with the introduction of fuel adjustment component (FAC), a component that links rail tariffs with the price of fuel.

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