Rake shortage leading to losses, claim traders

Concor officials contest claim, say demand is inadequate

Exporters and importers are facing problems in meeting their deadlines due to a shortage of rakes to carry containers to and from ports near Mumbai. The frequency of the trains is less than what was committed by the Container Corporation of India (Concor), exporters complain.

The container traffic in Vadodara and surrounding areas is over 2000 containers per month.

"However, not more than 900 containers are handled by Concor. This is due to the lower number of rakes moving to/ from Mumbai. Though Concor had committed two trains a week to Vadodara, only six trains run a month," said Sharad Mody, chairman, grievance committee of Exim Club, Vadodara.

"Importance has been given to bigger depots like Delhi and Ludhiana while allotting trains. Smaller depots like Vadodara end up as losers. Irregular schedules are causing trouble for production units as they are not getting raw material supplies on time," said a shipping liner who claims that twenty of his containers are lying at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) due to unavailability of rakes.

There have been instances when manufacturing at plants had to be stopped because the imported raw material was delayed due to unavailability of trains to carry containers from the port.

"The Exim Club has drawn the attention of the concerned authorities several times in the past about such incidents, but there has not been much change in the frequency. The road transport costs six to seven thousand more than that of the rail freight," said Mody.

However, Concor officials blame inadequate demand for the drop in the frequency of rakes to Vadodara.

"The train carrying containers has capacity to carry 80 to 90 containers at a time. We can allocate trains only when we have bookings of at least 80 containers. There is no issue of lesser frequency as long as we can get adequate bookings to allocate a train," said S D Saxena, manager of Concor, Vadodara.

"I do not understand why foreign traders are using costly road transportation when we are capable and ready to provide rakes," he added.

The exporters and importers are also facing problem due to the long distance between the inland container depot (ICD) and the train depot.

Shipping liners are demanding the custom house clearance to be done from one place only in stead of moving the container from ICD to depot and incurring extra cost.