Railway Targets 40% Freight Modal Share Within a Decade: Rajesh Agarwal, Additional Member (Works), Railway Board
July 23, 2026
NEW DELHI, July 23, 2026: Indian Railway has set a target of lifting freight's modal share on the rail network from roughly 24 per cent today to between 30 and 40 per cent over the next five to ten years.
Speaking at the seventh edition of FICCI’s Smart Railways Conclave, Future Rail India 2026, Mr Rajesh Agarwal, Additional Member (Works) at the Railway Board, said freight demand on the network was projected to reach 8,000 billion tonnes by 2030. Indian Railways is now the world's second-largest cargo carrier by volume, up from fourth, even as its share of the country's total freight movement remains well below potential.
Mr Agarwal set out the scale of the challenge. Of 514 sanctioned projects covering 169 projects on new lines, 316 on doublings and 29 on gauge conversions. These sanctioned projects cover roughly 40,000 kilometres, of which, only about 12,500 kilometres have been commissioned, leaving some 27,000 kilometres outstanding. The Railway Board intends to complete four to five thousand kilometres a year, aiming to finish more than 90 per cent of the sanctioned portfolio within five years.
To speed up execution, the Railway Board is rolling out procedural reforms. Pre-investment work such as land acquisition and forest clearances will now begin before formal project sanction, rather than after. An artificial-intelligence-based drawing approval tool, developed with RailTel, is intended to cut delays in drawing approval sign-off. Procurement is being centralised, with more risk transferred to contractors alongside greater decision-making freedom, and long-term, five-year Project General Management Services contracts will replace shorter supervision arrangements. A new Project Information Memorandum will give industry advance visibility of upcoming tenders.
Agarwal also called on manufacturers and MSMEs to develop construction machinery suited to rail's constrained rights-of-way, standardised precast components, and equipment-sharing platforms staffed by trained, certified operators — steps he said were necessary to mechanise track-laying at the scale now required.
In the industry address, Saurabh Sood, Co-Chair of FICCI's Committee on Railways and President and Managing Director of GATX India, pointed to the network's existing scale — 23 million passengers and 30,000 passenger trains daily, and 1.6 billion tonnes of freight a year — while urging greater operational flexibility for stakeholders, clearer delineation of roles between Indian Railways and private industry, and policy consistency to sustain investor confidence.
'What is required is consistency and transparency in policy,' Sood said, adding that capital and investor appetite were not in short supply.
Delivering the welcome address, Manish Agarwal, Co-Chair of FICCI's Committee on Railways and Head-Rail Infrastructure at Siemens Limited, framed the sector no longer as a mode of transport but as a strategic enabler of economic growth and industrial competitiveness.