Out of this, PR earning from passenger side remained at Rs 8671 million against budgetary target of Rs 8375 million, showing Rs 296 million more from the target. The income in freight was registered at Rs 4349 million against target of Rs 4200 million showing a rise of Rs 149 million when compared with the target.
PR has also been able to reduce its overdraft from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) by Rs 2 billion bringing down it from Rs 16 billion to Rs 14 billion, said the Federal Minister for Railways, Ghous Bukhsh Mehar while addressing a press conference here on Thursday.
To a question, the Minister said that due to hike in petroleum prices and additional burden after increase in salaries and pensions, PR was unable to provide relief to its passengers in shape of cut in fare. But we would certainly be facilitating our customers by running more speedy trains with better facilities, he added.
He disclosed that PR would soon be running a new non-stop train between Lahore-Rawalpindi covering the distance in less than four hours. It would comprise over modern Chinese passenger coaches, he added.
Giving performance indicators of the Railways during last fiscal, the Minister stated that 73 million passengers travelled through this mode of transportation during this period, while Railways also achieved 22.8 billion passengers kilometre highest ever achieved during last 56 years. Similarly, it achieved 25 percent higher tones per kilometres during this period, which was registered at 4.92 billion.
He said that five new trains were introduced during this period while 10 reservation offices in different cities were computerised and given online and return reservation facility including Karachi city, Karachi Cantt, Hyderabad, Multan Cantt, Lahore city, Lahore Cantt, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Quetta. While 20 more reservation offices would be computerised during current fiscal, he disclosed.
Mehar said that with receipt of latest design high capacity freight wagons from China, the journey time between Karachi-Lahore Dry Port has also been reduced from 52 hours to 28 hours. He said that work of doubling track between Lodhran-Khanewal would be completed by May 2006.
Regarding future projects, he said that feasibility study for Chaman-Kandhar rail route has been completed while Islam Kot-Thar coal field is expected to be completed by December 2004. It would also complete feasibility of Gwadar-Faran-Ahmadwal-Noshki by February 2005.