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Konkan Railway sees light at the end of the tunnel?

By Anil Sastry

MARGAO (GOA), APRIL 10. Despite registering considerable growth in revenue earnings over the years, the Konkan Railway Corporation Ltd., (KRCL) is unable to come out of the red and says it could break even in five years if it is allowed to exploit all its Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), including the Sky Bus project.

The total earnings during 2004-05 touched Rs. 280 crores against Rs. 230 crores the previous year and the freight traffic earning increased from Rs. 43 crores to Rs. 80 crores, the KRCL Managing Director, K.K. Gokhale, says.

Speaking to mediapersons here after the sixth meeting of the KR Users Consultative Committee, Dr. Gokhale said that apart from an average revenue increase of 30 per cent consistently, there was a tremendous increase in the freight revenue due to the transportation of mineral ores from here to Mangalore and from there to the rest of the country.

However, the KRCL cannot liquidate the total debt of around Rs. 4,500 crores, including bonds, loans from the Ministry of Railways (MoR) and cumulative loss as it could at the most register an earning of Rs. 400 crores if it exploits all the resources in freight traffic. The Board of Directors, that comprises representatives of four stake-holder States — Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra — has urged the MoR to put off any possible merger of the KRCL with the Indian Railways till it liquidates all its debts, and is given a free hand to exploit its IPR, he said.

The Corporation would earn around Rs. 470 crores in the next three years from the projects it is executing outside the Konkan belt for the Central Government and the Indian Railways, Dr. Gokhale said. They include laying of the 90 km railway track on the difficult terrain between Katra to Laula in the Jammu-Udhampur, the construction of 14 road overbridges in Jharkhand and the installation of the Anti-Collision Device (ACD) for the North Frontier Railway (NFR). The KRCL is also likely to get an order for installing the ACD all over the country once it is certified by the NFR.

The Director (Finance), KRCL, Rajalakshmi Ravikumar, said that PriceWaterhouseCoopers has valued the IPR of the Corporation at Rs. 2,000 crores in a conservative estimate and at around Rs. 8,000 crores in optimum utilisation. "Once we are allowed to exploit all our IPR, we are certain of coming out of the red," she said.

Sky Bus

Dr. Gokhale said that the MoR was awaiting a report from the Indreshan Committee constituted by the Ministry of Urban Development to decide under which mode of transport the Sky Bus technology should be certified. The report could be presented any time now and the Sky Bus would be a reality very soon.

Various states and foreign countries had enquired regarding the implementation of the technology, as it was cheaper (Rs. 50 crores a km) than other modes of urban mass rapid transport system, Dr. Gokhale said.

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Konkan Railway sees light at the end of the tunnel?

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