Budget proposes 3 major railway corridors, upgrading 40,000 trains to Vande Bharat status

Budget -2024-2 -Infra

The Indian Railways has received a major push in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Interim Budget for 2024-25, as the government plans to set up three major economic railway corridors to reduce congestion and logistics costs in India.

She also proposed that around 40,000 trains running as part of the Indian Railways will be upgraded to Vande Bharat trains.

"Three corridors, including a corridor for energy, mineral, and cement, another to enhance port connectivity corridor, and a third to decongest the high traffic density corridors will be set up," the finance minister said in her Interim Budget speech on February 1.

The projects have been identified under the PM Gati Shakti for enabling multimodal connectivity. They will improve logistics efficiency and reduce costs, Sitharaman added.

"The resultant corridors will de-congest the high traffic corridors and help in improve operations of passenger trains, resulting in safety and higher travel speed for passengers, together with dedicated freight corridors. These three economic corridor programmes will accelerate our GDP growth and reduce logistics cost," Sitharaman said.