Delhi Metro loses over 80 million passengers in a year: Annual Report

New Delhi (Urban Transport News): The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) Limited recently shared its Annual Report on the website. Due to the huge increase in Metro fares is on the pockets of the metro passengers, the number of passengers in the Delhi Metro has decreased compared to earlier, but in the terms of earnings, the Delhi Metro has become popular.

The annual report of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has revealed that after increasing the metro fare, 8,18,21,000 passengers were reduced in the metro over a year. Nevertheless, there was no shortage of revenue in the income box of the metro, but a huge increase in the earnings from the operating ratio of 38.93 percent to a large extent succeeded in reducing its deficit.

According to the report, in the year 2017-18, the Delhi Metro received revenue of Rs 6,211.05 crore. In addition to the passenger, fare included revenue from real estate, consultancy, and external projects. After deducting the total amount of 4,375.34 crores in this revenue, the metro has been benefitting Rs 1835.71 crores.

"In a rush to prove a flawed point an English daily has quoted old figures to draw its favorite conclusion on metro ridership numbers. The Annual Report on which the publication has based its fictional piece pertains to ridership figures of 2017-18 & not the recent figures. Fact is that metro ridership in October 2017 when the hike was implemented was 24.85 lakhs whereas it INCREASED to 26.79 lakhs in October 2018", said Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State for Housing & Urban Affairs.

It is a different matter that after completing loan and all other types of debt taken from the Japanese firm Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for metro projects, there is a total loss of Rs 93.14 crore. In its last financial year, the metro was in losses of Rs 248 crore. To compensate, the rent was increased by up to 100 percent only.

848.26 million earnings from the operations head

According to the DMRC report, in the year 2017-18, the metro earned an operating income of Rs. 3027.26 crore. Its earnings from the previous financial year was Rs 2179 crore. In this way, DMRC got more revenue of 848.26 crores from metro operations, despite the reduction in fare, operating revenue increased by 6 to 11 percent every year. The reason for this was to increase the number of passengers every year in the metro.

No income earning from other sources

The Central Urban Development Ministry has instructed DMRC to find out other ways to increase metro revenue. Despite this, revenue from other sources has not been increased, but the reduction in revenue from consultancy fees and external projects. External projects received revenue of Rs 2331.02 crore, which is less than Rs 124.98 crore from the previous financial year. If the number of passengers had not been reduced in the metro and the revenue did not decrease from the external projects, then it would also have been able to compensate the losses of 93.14 crore and fill the track of the metro profits.

Lowest passengers in three years

A total of 9260.69 lakh passengers traveled in the metro in 2017-18. This is the lowest figure in three years. Last year, 10,078.90 lakh people had traveled in the metro.