SRT launches organizational restructuring

BANGKOK, December 29 (TNA) - The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) is implementing its organizational restructuring, as instructed by the Ministry of Transport, aimed to considerably boost its revenues over the next couple of years. Thai Deputy Transport Minister Dr. Pichit Akrathit told journalists, after visiting the SRT head office and met SRT Board members in Bangkok on December 28, that he gave a policy to SRT to launch its organizational restructuring to boost its revenues and to provide upgraded services to the public, covering an increase in its efficiency of land management, while also supporting rail cargo transport to help reduce national logistics costs and to ease its accumulated operational losses previously. For the increase in the efficiency of SRT's land management, Dr. Pichit said he has assigned SRT to set up a subsidiary tasked directly with the management of its over 16,000 acre-plots of land across the country and its other assets. Dr. Pichit pointed out if efficiently managed, SRT could earn at least 3-4 times higher from its present annual revenues of overall three billion baht on average from the property, especially its plots of land in such prime areas as Makkasan, Bangsue and Mae Nam Stations. The deputy transport minister revealed that he has ordered the SRT Board to work out and submit its plan to increase its efficiency in the property management to his ministry within two weeks and to set up a subsidiarty directly tasked with the property management within three months so that it could earn at least additional 10,000 annual revenues over the next two years. According to the deputy minister, he has also suggested SRT to find out measures to boost its revenues from passenger and cargo train services, aimed to boost revenues of its overall rail transport services to cover all its operational and other costs in the coming years, namely launching campaigns to encourage more use of cargo trains among local business operators to reduce not only national logistics costs, but also energy consumption. Besides, SRT has been suggested to pay attention to good public services, especially providing best-possible access to train services to low-income people and to quickly expand its cross-border rail transport connectivity with neighboring countries in the ASEAN Community (AC) to also support cross-border trade in line with the Thai government's policy. Meanwhile, SRT Governor Wutthichart Kalayanamitr told reporters that SRT is ready to work out plans and implement measures as assigned by the Ministry of Transport, while also opening an opportunity to the private sector to jointly invest in the SRT plans. (TNA)