‘Too early to predict Covid impact on rlys’
NEW DELHI: Railways and commerce minister Piyush Goyal says the revival of global trade, severely impacted by Covid-19, will take some time. In an interview with HT, he speaks about milestones in the Narendra Modi government’s second stint and the impact of the pandemic on Indian Railways, among other issues.
During this period, the world economy was going through stress; trade wars were playing out...a number of factors worldwide made the global trade contract. And then it culminated with the Covid problem... We could not continue to grow as we would have liked to, but we look at this also as a challenge. We are very focused, as you saw from the ~20-lakh-crore Atmanirbhar Bharat package. It’s not about giving a short-term solution but to prepare India for the medium and long term. what was spent before the Modi government came. It’s been a continuous process of massive ramp-up, of modernisation, of improving punctuality and quality of catering services. The crowning glory of the year gone by is zero passenger fatality due to rail accidents.
That is one of the things we have to do to increase efficiency. It’s a part of the modernisation and efficiency improvement programme... And after we get free from this, we will be in a position to take this forward.
We have started 200 long-distance mail/express trains. We already started 30 Rajdhanis. Throughout this period, you would not have heard of a single incident of food grain shortage, or fertilizer shortage for farmers, or coal shortage for powerhouses because we continued to supply all this through freight trains...we also ran nearly 3,575 parcel trains to transport small quantities of agriculture produce, fruits and vegetables. we will have to wait and watch. It’s a little early to predict the financial impact.
It has been a setback (in terms of infrastructure) for the past three months. We have to assess now how quickly we can...get the labour back on the job.
I think it’s going to still take time. The jury is out... it’s also intrinsically linked with the spread of the virus and what numbers we see going forward, and the vaccine and the cure for the virus. I think all estimates we made so far are continuously changing.
In terms of RCEP, India has presented its concerns before all RCEP members. Clearly, we believe that we have to protect our domestic manufacturers, our farmers, the MSME sector, our milk producers...unless there is a full resolution of our issues, it will be very difficult for us to get back on the negotiating table.