railway budget

Scrap railway budget: Niti Aayog panel

NEW DELHI: The British-era practice of a separatemay be discarded by the Narendra Modi government after a high-powered panel headed by Niti Aayog member Bibek Debroy recommended that the annual exercise be scrapped.Niti Aayog was mandated by the Prime Minister's Office to work out a detailed plan for integration of rail budget with the general budget. Debroy had made similar recommendations in a report on restructuring of railways. But only some of the recommendations were implemented.In the past, too, the finance ministry had discussed the possibility of merging the railway budget in the general budget but it never moved beyond that stage due to opposition from the railways. This time, however, the railways seems more amenable to the proposal, especially because the PMO has stepped in. A railway source said the move could be implemented from the next financial year itself.“The Constitution does not mandate the government to lay a separate railway budget," the latest report said. The report said that doing away with the annual practice could help de-politicise operations and create room for the government to take commercial decisions which could be unpopular.Phasing out the rail budget could be the foundation for transforming the public transporter, the NITI Aayog panel said. It suggested that it could help usher in commercial accounting practices, clean up finances, establish a framework for sharing social costs between departments and reinstate the commercial character of railways.The committee argued that most of the content of a rail budget could be dealt with through documents such as annual reports, outcome reports and vision documents. The railways' budget estimates could be presented as a part of the general budget, as is the case with other departments.The committee has suggested a detailed conceptual framework for the merger of rail budget with general budget. The Debroy panel noted that gradually a suitable subsidy-sharing mechanism can be worked out and the proposed railway development authority may be tasked with it. For fixing fares and freight rates, the committee has proposed that the government could complete the task after considering the regulator's recommendations.