Railway Budget: Why You Need to Know These 10 Numbers

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu will present his first Budget on Thursday. The Rail Budget is usually a low key affair, unlike the Union Budget, which is discussed and dissected for days. These ten numbers are important for understanding the Rail Budget.

1) 23 million - The number of passengers railways carries every day. That's equivalent to moving the entire population of the Australia every day. For this the railways runs 12,617 passenger trains every day connecting 7172 stations across the country.

2) Rs 26,000 crore - The amount of losses railways incurs every year on subsidizing passenger fares.

3) 67 per cent - The contribution of freight in railways earnings. The share of freight carried by railways among total freight carried by all means has declined from 89 per cent in 1950-51 to 31 per cent because successive governments have cross-subsidised passenger fares with freight fares. The railways carry 2.65 million tonnes of freight every day.

4) Rs 1.40 lakh crore or $23 billion is the annual revenue of railways every year, which is less than the revenue of state-run companies such as Indian Oil Corp and ONGC.

5) Rs 1.82 lakh crore is the amount of funds railways requires for completion of 359 pending projects. In the last 30 years, only 317 of the 676 sanctioned projects have been completed at a cost of Rs 1.58 lakh crore.

6) 94 per cent is the railways' operating ratio, which means it saves just 6 paise on every 1 rupee it earns from operations. This leaves very little money for expansion.

7) $100 billion or Rs 6 lakh crore is the amount of fund railways needs for investments in next 3-4 years.

8) Rs 50,000 crore is what railways is likely to ask from the Central government as Budgetary support. That's less than 0.5 per cent of India's GDP.

9) 200 km: The average number of kilometers added per year to rail route since independence. In the last 67 years, just 13,000 kilometers of rail route has been added for a total route of 64,460 kilometers, which is the fourth-largest in the world, but much lower than China's over 1 lakh kilometers.

10) 13.1 lakh is the number of people railways employs making it the country's single biggest employer.