RECOMMENDATIONS

§ The allocation of resources to various Railways and the departments within Railways, should be based on a well defined policy. The productivity of investments should be an important consideration for determination of the share of Plan allocations

§ The productivity of investments should also be measured at macro level, for a Railway system as a whole, along with the present system of seeing the financial viability of each project at micro-level.

§ The investment decisions should be taken as a system and not piecemeal. All works to remove any gaps, bottlenecks or ancillary works, to make the project fully functional should be included.

§ A computer-based system should the evolved to link the revenue budget with the investment Plan. The additional earnings/savings projected in the project estimates should be reflected in the revenue budget of the Railway during the year of commissioning of the project.

§ Investments to be focused on increasing the throughput of the high density routes in a phased manner. Initially major thrust has to be on increasing the line capacity by modernising signalling system and critical line capacity works.

§ Next focus for investments should be on improving the carrying capacity of wagon. This will involve upgrading the structure of wagon, particularly the bogey, for higher speeds and Axle load.

§ Wagons have also to the suitably modernised for mechanised loading and unloading. Necessary facilities at the terminals have also to be created simultaneously.

§ New standards for asset utilisation should be laid down through simulation models, Effective steps have to be taken to minimise the online failures of Rolling Stock, the speed restrictions and failure of other equipments.

§ .Ultimate aim should be to run goods trains on the basis of a timetable like passenger trains. Beginning can be made by launching a pilot project

§ At Railway Board's level there should be a convergence of the three components of Plan. The integrated Plan should be jointly put to the Minister by the full Board.

§ The departmental processing of investment proposals at the Zonal Railway and Railway Board level should be done away with. The investments should be finally decided by a multi-discipline Planning cell where the long-range decision support system should be extensively used.

§ A Zero-base review should be conducted for all items in the pink book. The Railways should be asked to limit the number of items based on their priority and likely availability of resources.

§ Itemised RSPand M&P Programme should be finalised at the Zonal Railways level. A lump-sum allotment based on their proposals should be made to each Railway. This will not only reduce the size of pink book considerably, but also minimise the present mismatch between requirement of the Railway and the availability of equipments.

§ Similarly the ceiling for inclusion of any work in Works Programme should also the suitable modified.

§ The project Planning and implementation has to the improved considerably. Apart from ensuring availability of resources, adequate tenure for the project team will help in cutting the cost and time overrun and increase accountability.

§ Productivity tests, as provided, should be conducted in all cases. The Railway Board should monitor the position of completion reports and productivity tests effectively.

§ The quality of repair and maintenance of Stock should be improved by moderanisation of repair shops in an integrated manner. The maintenance of Track Machines should also be carried at Rolling Stock workshops in place of running parallel infrastructure.

§ Materials procurement processes need a change in approach. For critical and safety items, system of dedicated sources in place of present open tender system should the introduced.

§ As the Railway imports are sizeable, a system of monitoring foreign exchange flows and risk management should be put in place. The foreign exchange earnings of Railways can be used for natural hedging.

§ The spare capacity in Railway workshops can be productivity utilised for value added services. The model prepared by Shri S A Singh is worth considering in this regard. Similar approach has to be followed in case of additional manpower.

§ The present system of Accounting on the Railways has limitations as a managerial tool. Apart from Government accounts, management accounting system, for making required information available faster should also be introduced. Cost accounting is one area, which requires considerable improvement.

§ The Traffic Accounts should be decentralised to the divisional level. This will be first step in the direction of making the division, a profit centre.

§ Performance indices should be suitable for converting into monetary terms. The number of indices should also be reduced and made more focused.

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