Indian Railways Revenue Drop By 26% Due To Digital India!
Indian Railways experienced heavy loss, due to their decision to waive off service charge on all online ticket bookings.
It seems Digital India mission is proving to be costly for Indian Railways!
As per latest report coming in, Indian Railways experienced heavy loss, due to their decision to waive off service charge on all online ticket bookings.
We will analyse the loss, but there is another very interesting development: For the first time, Indian Railways has sent their staff on foreign holiday.
What exactly is happening here?
26% Drop In Revenue Due To Digital India!
As per latest numbers, internet ticketing revenue of Indian Railways has dropped to Rs 466.05 crore in the financial year 2016-17, and this mainly happened due to their decision to waive off service charge.
Indian Railways had decided to waive off service charge on bookings made via IRCTC website starting from November 2016.
This drop of revenues is 26%, compared to previous financial year.
Now, this waiver on service charge was announced till September 30th, 2017, which has now been extended to March, 2018.
This means, for this current financial year as well, Indian Railways will encounter heavy loss on Internet booking revenues.Internet booking revenues form 30% of overall revenues of Indian Rail, and this massive drop of 26% signifies a major portion. As a result of this, their operating margins reduced by 41.7%.
During 2016-17, total of 209 million tickets were booked via IRCTC website, valued at Rs 24,485.21 crore.
Foreign Trip For Indian Railways Employees!
Meanwhile, notwithstanding the loss, Indian Railways has decided to send their employees on a foreign tour – a first in their entire history.
Not only senior management, but gangmen, trackmen and other non-gazetted employees will also visit a foreign location for holiday.
In their first batch, 100 non-gazetted workers of South Central Railway has already flown to Singapore and Malaysia on a 6-day holiday retreat.
As per M. Umashankar Kumar, SCR chief public relations officer , 75% of the expenditure would be borne by Staff Benefit Fund (SBF), while the rest would be spent by the employees.
He said, “The 100 strong group of employees… comprised of Group C and D category employees, with preference given to employees from lower cadres and those nearing retirement. Allocation of number of slots for each Division, Workshop and Headquarters was given on the basis of their sanctioned strength,”
As per reports, these employees would visit tourist attractions such as Universal Studios, Sentosa and Night Safari in Singapore and includes the Kuala Lumpur City Tour, Petronas Towers, Batu Caves and Genting Highlands in Malaysia.
We will keep you updated.
