Hyderabad: Hyderabad Metro Rail (HMRL) reported a loss in the financial year 2023-24 (FY24). One of the reasons mentioned was the implementation of the Mahalakshmi scheme as this was the primary reason for the fall. The scheme, which gives women the right to ride a bus for free at anytime, has changed the average number of people using the metro in the city.
The daily ridership, as per the numbers revealed by official figures of Larsen & Toubro Engineering conglomerate (L&T), has been on the rise from 4. As a result, the number of passengers is anticipated in Q4FY23 to be 8 lakhs, which is 4 times greater than the last year. 41 lakh passengers during the Q4 of FY2024-2025. However, the ridership was lower than the average population size which was 3. The number of passengers/day was 44 lakhs in Q3FY24.
As an Investor Relations Head of L&T Limited, P. Ramakrishnan stated in the Q4FY24 financial report that the slight fall in ridership during the quarter was mainly due to the Mahalakshmi scheme implication on the number of passengers.
Contrastingly, L&T’s CFO R. Shankar Raman had a different view during a post-earning call. He added that the IT companies’ stricter regulations for their employees to return to the office could be a plus for the Hyderabad Metro Project.
Also, IT companies adopting work from home could be one of the reasons for the decline.
Hyderabad Metro is the third longest operating metro system after Delhi Metro and Namma Metro (Bengaluru), and the lines are laid in a secant layout. The financing of this project is done through the public-private partnership PPP mode, where the state government holds a minority stake.
