Interim Budget 2024: Railways to get three economic corridors

Chennai: The interim budget found rail and air transport as well as renewable energy as promising sectors. While renewable energy saw some increase in allocation, a significant increase has not been made for the transport sector. 

The Budget proposed the implementation of three major economic railway corridor programmes under PM Gati Shakti to improve logistics efficiency - energy, mineral, and cement corridors, port connectivity corridors, and high-traffic density corridors. The resultant decongestion of the high-traffic corridors will also help in improving the operations of passenger trains, resulting in safety and higher travel speed for passengers.

Further, 40,000 normal rail bogies will be converted to the Vande Bharat standards to enhance the safety, convenience, and comfort of passengers, it said. However, the allocation for railways has not seen a substantial increase to support the freight corridors under development as well as the proposed ones. The allocation has gone up to Rs 2.7 lakh crore from Rs 2.58 lakh crore in the previous budget.

Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman spoke about aircraft orders of over 1000 new aircraft placed by Air India and IndiGo and said that expansion of existing airports and development of new airports will continue expeditiously. However this was not supported by allocation as civil aviation will receive a lesser amount of Rs 2106 crore against Rs 2846 crore in the previous budget. 

Considering Metro Rail and NaMo Bharat as the



catalysts for the required urban transformation, the expansion of these systems will be supported in large cities. The government will also expand and strengthen the e-vehicle ecosystem by supporting manufacturing and charging infrastructure. Greater adoption of e-buses for public transport networks will be encouraged through payment security mechanisms.

On the renewable energy front, through rooftop solarization, one crore households will be enabled to obtain up to 300 units of free electricity every month. This will support savings up to Rs 15 -18,000 annually for households from free solar electricity, selling the surplus to distribution companies and charging electric vehicles. Towards achieving ‘net zero’ by 2070, viability gap funding will be provided for harnessing offshore wind energy potential for initial capacity of one giga-watt, and coal gasification and liquefaction capacity of 100 MT will be set up by 2030. 

This will also help in reducing imports of natural gas, methanol, and ammonia. The government will also mandate phased blending of compressed biogas (CBG) in compressed natural gas (CNG) for transport and piped natural gas (PNG) for domestic purposes. Financial assistance will be provided for the procurement of biomass aggregation machinery to support collection. To promote green growth, a new scheme of bio-manufacturing and bio-foundry will be launched. The allocation for new and renewable energy has been increased from Rs 9168 crore to Rs 11182 crore.