Indian Railways recorded the best Monthly freight loading of 122.14 MT in July 2022. The incremental loading in July has been 9.3 MT, i.e. growth of 8.25 per cent over the previous best July figures achieved in 2021.
With this, Indian Railways has had 23 straight months of best ever monthly freight loading.
Indian Railways (IR) has achieved an incremental loading of 11.54 MT in Coal, followed by 1.22 MT in balance other goods, 0.56 MT each in cement & clinker and containers and 0.47 MT in Petroleum, Oil, and Lubricants (POL).
An increase in automobile loading has been another highlight of the freight business in FY 2022- 23. Around 1,698 rakes were loaded in FY 2022-23 till July compared to 994 rakes during the same period of last year, i.e. a growth of 71 per cent.
The cumulative freight loading from April 2022 to July 2022 has been 501.53 MT as against 452.13 MT achieved in 2021-22, i.e. an incremental loading of 49.40 MT, with a growth of 10.92 per cent over the same period last year.
The freight NTKMs (Net tonne-kilometres) has increased from 63.3 billion in July 2021 to 75 Billion in July 2022, registering a growth of 18.38 per cent. The cumulative NTKMs in the first four months of FY 23 have also grown by 19.46 per cent.
“The sustained efforts of Indian Railways to increase supply of Coal to Power houses, in close coordination with the Ministry of Power and Coal, have been one of the key features of the freight performance in the month of July,” the Ministry of Railways said.
“The loading of Coal (both domestic and imported) to power houses has increased by 13.2 MT in July with 47.98 MT Coal being moved to Power houses as against 34.74 MT last year, i.e. a growth of 38 per cent,” it added.
Cumulatively, in the first four months of the financial year, IR has loaded more than 47.95 MT of extra coal to Power Houses compared to last year, with a growth of more than 32 per cent.
100 Gati-Shakti Cargo Terminals
Indian Railways has given top priority to increasing the freight loadings. With this objective, Railways has aimed to operationalise 100 Gati-Shakti Cargo Terminals (GCT) with private participation by 2024.
A new terminal policy called the Gati-Shakti Multi-Modal Cargo Terminal has been issued to facilitate and accelerate the development of cargo terminals on the Indian Railways network.
Ten such terminals have been commissioned, while 66 private players have shown interest in setting up such private terminals.
Also, to achieve an ambitious target of 3,000 million tons loading by 2027, Indian Railways has formulated an action plan for making requisite policy, and strategic interventions prioritising capacity enhancement works to induce the desired result in a time-bound manner.
A committee was constituted to draw up a comprehensive action plan for creating adequate carrying capacity over the next five years and has also devised strategy/policy initiatives for inducing a modal shift to Rail.