Wednesday, October 19 2005 18:16 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: The Railways are expecting a net surplus of Rs 1,900 crore during the current fiscal, an increase of Rs 200 crore over that of last year, according to Minister of State for Railways, R Velu.

"By the end of this year, our balance will be Rs 10,000 crore. The net surplus will be Rs 1,900 crore. Last year, the net surplus was Rs 1,700 crore," Velu said at a seminar on 'Indian Railways: The Road Ahead' organised here by Merchants Chamber of Commerce today (Oct 19, 2005).

He described 2005-06 as the 'golden year' for the Railways and said it will witness a growth of 10 per cent, which is higher than the national GDP growth.

Attributing the growth to the aggressive marketing policy of the railways both in the freight and passenger sectors, the minister said that schemes like 'build your warehouse' and 'roll-on, roll-off,' were a big success.

In response to the 'build-your-warehouse' scheme, the Central Warehousing Corporation has already built a warehouse on railway land at Bangalore and is in the process of constructing warehouses in 22 other places.