The railways are looking at Container Corporation Of India (Concor) to capture the piece meal traffic that only uses road transport by substantially hiking plan support to the corporation in the forthcoming Union Budget.
The ministry feels that it is practically impossible for railways to offer the quick turn around time that fast moving consumer goods, or intermediate goods need.
This is because the amount of investment that would be required by the railways to offer a quick despatch to such business is too high, by altering the existing railway sidings, and modifying warehouses and even creating new ones in the vicinity of the markets, which the railways cannot offer now.
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Officials said that the alternative is to leverage the capacity of Concor to transport containerised cargo using the rail network to the locations that the business needs. They said that over the years the corporation has been concentrating almost exclusively on the foreign market and it is time to strengthen the domestic focus.
Over the last couple of years the railways had been trying to augment the existing freight operations by offering a faster haulage options to non traditional business.
This was also expected to give a cheaper option to road transport by the railways. But officials said with the existing infrastructure was impossible to give the timely and safe transportation that the FMCG or comparable business would need.
In the current fiscal Concor has averaged a growth rate of about 24 per cent which is far higher than the average growth rate of rail freight in the current year. Last fiscal it attained a turnover of Rs 832 crore earning a profit of Rs 178 crore.
Speaking at a seminar organised by the corporation today Railway Board chairman R N Malhotra said the Railways will be extending the best possible assistance in facilitating trade activities by stepping up connectivity to ports.
Touching upon the success story of Concor with 46 well knit terminals the chairman said the corporation is gearing up to provide hinterland connectivity in a big way.
The chairman of Concor, A K Kohli, said they are planning to provide faster transit between the country and also to neighbouring countries by running a feeder service to Bangladesh and connect Nepal by the rail route for cargo traffic.