Indian Railways' catering arm slumps after ministry asks for 50% convenience fee share

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism

29/10/2021 05:24

BENGALURU, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Indian Railways Catering and
Tourism Corporation  INIR.NS   (IRCTC) shares plunged as much as
20% in early trade on Friday, after the railway ministry asked
its catering and tourism arm to share half of all the
convenience fee revenue it earns.
    The Ministry of Railways has conveyed its decision to share
the revenue earned from convenience fee collected by IRCTC in
the ratio of 50:50 from Nov. 1, IRCTC said in a regulatory
filing https://www.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/547a294c-3854-4d4c-8928-d62b328cdd35.pdf
 on Thursday. 
     The state-owned IRCTC is the only firm authorised to manage
food services on trains and has a monopoly in the online
ticketing and catering services for the Indian Railways. 
    The stock dropped 20% to 730.80 rupees by 0419 GMT, while
other Indian public sector companies were also hit, with the
public sector enterprises index  .NIFTYPSE  falling 2.8%, the
top loser among sub-indexes.

 (Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi
Aich)
 ((Vishwadha.Chander@thomsonreuters.com; Mobile: +91 7506036802;
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vishwadha;))