Railways gets wings, aviation’s clipped

PK47

Aiming to build on the momentum in road-building and railway augmentation, the centre has allocated around Rs 1.93 lakh crore for transport infrastructure for 2019-20 to push construction and expansion of highways, railways, rural roads, Metro, shipping and waterways.

While the allocation for railways has gone up by 21% and capital expenditure pegged at more than Rs 1.58 lakh crore, for highways sector the hike is nearly 5.8%. There is a 54% cut in allocation for aviation sector from Rs 9,700 crore in 2018-19 to only Rs 4,500 crore for the next financial year. Spending by NHAI is estimated around 1.12 lakh crore in 2019-20.

Highlighting the acceleration in highways and railway sector, FM Goyal said, “India is currently the world’s fastest highway developer, with 27km of highways built each day.” The Centre has allocated Rs 83,000 crore to the road transport and highways ministry.
For railways, it has allocated nearly Rs 66,769 crore for 2019-20 compared to Rs 55,135 crore for the current FY. Railways has been allowed to raise Rs 94,000 crore from the market to make an all-time high capital investment. The Centre has also enhanced allocation to PM Gram Sadak Yojana to Rs 19,000 crore from Rs 15,500 crore in the revised 2018-19 estimate. Goyal said construction of rural roads has tripled under the scheme and pucca roads now cover 15.8 lakh out of 17.84 lakh habitations.

Source: Times of India

Rhett_Bassard

Feels like an advert for BJP.

Srinivas1939

Let us face facts.It makes sense to build a sound transport infrastructure  concentrating on extending the railway network and improving rail services and the construction of roads to provide better connectivity across the country.If a choice has to be made between the aviation sector and the surface transport sector the latter has to prevail in the Indian context.

foraku

It will be great if this gets translated into action, instead of crores being just allocated n then plundered by the powers

Well the condition of roads, even toll roads, makes one feel pessimistic. It's not that i'm always complaining. It's just that the complaints are outta frustration and anger looking at the overall safety n standards of our roads, one cannot say with pride that we are world class. The thought that so much spending is not even getting us anywhere in terms of world class is what i'm trying to point out.