In order to reduce its losses and dependence on government handouts, Sri Lanka Railways doubled its fares. This will be the first raise of Sri Lanka Railways since 2005.
Except few routes where the rail tracks are slightly longer than buses the new rates will be lower. Sri Lanka Railways carry 4% of the country’s commuters. What makes the scenario worse is that the 17,000 employees of Sri Lanka Railways pay only 5 cents per passenger kilometer.
Lanka Business Online reports:
Except for a few routes where the rail track was slightly longer than buses, Gunaruwan said the new rates would be lower than bus fares.
Last year the state railways lost 7.5 billion rupees. Though it had running expenses of around a billion rupees a year it was only able to get 2.5 billion rupees in revenue due to under pricing of fares.
A 30 rupee hike in diesel to 110 rupees a liter last week is expected to push up operating costs by a further 900 million rupees a year.
Gunaruwan said when he was a university student rail fares were higher than buses, but now rail fares were half that of the bus fare.
Compared to the railways,
Sri Lanka Railways is a state run organization and every year it incurs huge loss. More over, the rising fuel cost has become another major problem for the organization. Corruption, poor management, and labor-union have made it a huge burden on the people of
Gunaruwan said that if the fare is not increased now then the government will have to pay the extra money which means all the people of the country would have to pay including those who do not use transport.
Related article:
Lanka Business Online
It is obviously a good decision taken by Srilankan government. I appreciate this decision because only government can not bare the lose of rail project. Now, their new fare of railway will become successful to cover the loss. And general people will also accept it and i think 50 cent will not be a big problem for general people those who travel by train most of the time inside the country.
Posted by: kamrul hasan | May 29, 2008 2:06 PM | Permalink to Comment