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losses of the state-run transport agency, they said.

BR incurred Tk 1,644 crore of losses in 2018-19 fiscal, according to BR’s Information Book-2019.

Besides, there is pressure from multilateral lenders of different BR projects to raise train fare regularly, the sources added. The relevant section of BR started some preliminary work in this regard.

The latest train fare hike was in February 2016, when BR raised the fare by 7.23 percent. In the last few years, BR took several moves to raise the fare but ultimately did not, sources said.

The railways minister said BR is a state-run agency, and the government is subsidising its operations.

“The matter is not that the railway was making profits anyway, and the rise of fuel prices will force it to incur losses,” he said.

“We, however, have asked [authority concerned] to assess how much more losses we will have to incur due to the hike.”

Asked whether they have taken any step to hike the fare, the minister replied in the negative.