Speed Post News Network
New Delhi: An interactive seminar with major industries and stakeholders of Indian Railways freight business was organized here on Thursday. The theme of the seminar was “ Looking beyond coal growth starategies for railways in changing environment” and in view of the the importance of freight business, it was specially addressed by railway minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu and minister of state for railways Manoj Sinha. The seminar was chaired by Mohd. Jamshed, Member Traffic, Railway Board.
This has been an unprecedented initiative of the railway ministry Railways as it seeks increase in its freight business. Addressing the interactive session, Prabhu said that Indian Railways was making all out efforts to boost its freight traffic. He pointed out that directions have been given to the traffic department of Railways to intensely interact with the freight business representatives and understand their problems and try to address them. Prabhu said that Railway officers both at zonal level and divisional level were reaching out to customers to increase Railway’s freight business. He said that Railways is focusing on non-coal traffic also in a big way and this seminar is discussing strategies for the same. He said that integrated accounting reforms was now underway in Indian Railway system. He pointed out that transparency in the Railway functioning has been given top priority and the entire tender process has been made online.
He said that Indian Railways is working on ERP Software system which has been rated by some agencies as the largest such project anywhere in the world. He said that the steps have also been initiated to tap non-fare revenue in a big way and a separate directorate has been set up for handling this subject exclusively. He said that the Indian Railways is forming joint venture companies with different state governments which will further help in proliferating Railway Infrastructure across the nation.
Minister of state for Railways Manoj Sinha said that Railways is going to make all out efforts to increase its freight loading. He said that it is always useful to maintain a two – way dialogue between Railway administration and Railway customers as it leads to better policy formulation.