Anantapur: SC Railway begins appointing Business Development Units at zonal, divisional levels

Guntakal (Anantapur): Business Development Units (BDUs) are being set up by the Railways at both zonal and divisional levels to give a big boost to freight traffic operations. The focus of these units is to double the freight carried by Railways by 2024.

As a step in the direction, Railways has constituted a multi-disciplinary Business Development Unit at zonal level comprising Senior Administrative Grade Officers from all major relevant fields.

B Nagya, Chief Freight Transportation Manager (Mob: 9701370901), would be the Convener of the BDU. B.S. Christopher, Chief Commercial Manager (Freight Marketing), Korram Kishore, FA&CAO/T and Prasun Chakravarthy, Chief Rolling Stock Engineer (CRSE) will be its members, according to a press release issued by SCR.

The Committee will have frequent interactions with the trade and industry to understand the existing pattern of goods transportation and to explore the possibility of attracting additional freight traffic to railways.

The BDU will also serve as a nodal point for speedy implementation of any new traffic proposals. Similar Business Development Units are also being formed in all the six divisions of SCR (at the Divisional levels) with Senior Divisional Operating Managers acting as the Coordinators of Divisional BDUs.

The freight traffic in SCR is back on the track of recovery after the nation-wide lockdown imposed to contain the spread the Covud-19. The freight traffic has been consistently increasing from 4.81 MT in April to 6.71 MT in May 2020 and 6.86 MT in June 2020.

Importantly, traffic in several commodities have been increasing and, in some commodities, has even crossed last year level of loading. For example, Cement loading which was only 0.21 MT in April 2020 has risen to 2.23 MT in May and to 2.27 MT in June 2020.

In fact, the Cement loading in June 2020 is higher than the Cement loading witnessed in June 2019 (i.e., 2.08 MT). Similarly, the Food-grains loading in Apr-June 2020 has increased by more than 174% compared to same period last year (i.e., 2.71 MT this year compared to 0.9 MT last year), the release added.

In the release, Gajanan Mallya, General Manger, SCR has advised the members of newly formed Business Development Committee to have regular interactions with both the existing and new customers, so that focus is given equally to improve the freight traffic in both the segments.