Railways haul 7% more cargo in April-Dec

Indian Railways earned Rs 20,172.47 crore by carrying 407.15 million tonnes (MT) of freight traffic during the first nine months of the current fiscal.

While freight traffic has grown by 7.01 per cent over the 380.46 MT during the corresponding period in the previous fiscal, earnings have increased by 1.87 per cent. The revenue from cargo traffic during April-December 2002 was at Rs 19,802.17 crore.

Earnings have shown a marginal improvement since some stock-taking in October. The results for the first six months had shown an increase in freight revenue of 1.75 per cent only despite a 7.4 per cent increase in traffic.

The yield per million tonne up to December has gone up, though marginally, to Rs 49.55 crore compared to Rs 49.39 crore for the first six months.

The earnings per million tonne have, however, dipped by 4.80 per cent from Rs 52.05 crore in the first nine months of the last fiscal.

The budget target of revenue receipt and freight traffic for the current year are Rs 27,815 crore and 540 MT, respectively.

As per the year's target, every million tonne of freight should yield Rs 51.50 crore, but the actual realisation for the first nine months has been 3.79 per cent short of the target.

It is in this scenario that the Railways are expecting to overshoot their budget loading target for the current fiscal by 10 MT, while on the earnings front, a shortfall of Rs 790 crore is expected.

Category wise, there has been a decline in tonnnage and earnings from both fertilisers and petroleum, oil and lubricants (POL) and a marginal fall in earnings from coal despite increased loading of 10.74 per cent over last year.

Coal, with a share of 45.08 per cent, was the dominant component of the total cargo.

The total freight traffic break-up is as follows coal (183.57 MT), iron ,steel and related inputs (42.68 MT), cement (35.61 MT), foodgrains (33.91 MT), petroleum oil and lubricant (23.74 MT), fertilisers (19.89 MT) other goods (48.89 MT).