Traditional products include coal, iron ore, cement, foodgrains, petroleum products, steel among others.
Despite her announcement in the Parliament that she would be looking at increasing their share in new traffic streams like automobiles, fly ash amongst others, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee has relied on traditional products to earn freight revenues for the financial year 2009-10. These include coal, iron ore, cement, foodgrains, petroleum products, steel among others.
Freight earnings from coal, the largest revenue earner for the railways, is budgeted to increase by 15 per cent from the revised estimate of Rs 20,738 crore in 200809 to Rs 23,964 crore in 2009-10. However taking the slowdown in exports in consideration the freight earnings from iron for exports has been budgeted to fall from Rs 8494.75 crore in 2008-9 (revised estimate) to Rs 7,895.62 crore for 2009-10.
Freight earnings from cement are expected to go up from Rs 4776 crore in the revised estimates of 2008-9 to 5283 crore in 2009-10 a growth of 10.6 per cent. Similarly freight earnings from fertilizer will go up from Rs 2913 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 3054 in 2009-10 crore an increase of only 4 per cent.
Freight from petroleum products has gone up by 7 per cent from Rs 3138.32 crore in 2008-9 to Rs 3,361.43 crore in 2009-10 in the budget projections.
However earnings from other goods, which Banerjee has been talking about, has been projected to go down from Rs 4,496 crore in 2008-09 to projected revenues of Rs 4484.19 crore in 2009-10. And earnings from container services is projected to grow by over 7 per cent from Rs 2317.57 crore in 2008- 09 crore to Rs 2482.45 crore projected in 2009-10.