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Union Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on Wednesday spelt out steps for making Indian Railways a profit earning entity. Such steps include measures for enhancing earnings on the one hand and controlling avoidable revenue expenditure on the other.

Revenue enhancing measures, inter alia, include targeting progressively higher traffic throughput, effective marketing strategies to capture more and more traffic, creation of additional capacity and optimum utilization of the existing rail infrastructure, enhancement in productivity and efficiency, improvement of passenger interface, periodic rationalization of fare and freight rates and focus on increasing the share of non-fare revenue sources in Railwaysâ earnings.

Expenditure control measures include strict economy and austerity measures, improved man-power planning, better asset utilization, inventory management and optimizing fuel consumption.”