Indian Railways registers record in freight loading

Vijayawada: The Indian Railways, which had registered the best ever performance in 2021-22 in freight loading, has carried forward the momentum of the previous year in April 2022. It has registered a record 122.2 million tonnes (MT) of originating freight loading with an incremental loading of 10.5 MT (9.5 percent growth) over the previous best figures in April '21 which was 111.64 MT.

This growth has been fuelled by incremental loading of 5.8 MT in coal, followed by 3.3 MT in food grains and 1.3 MT of fertilisers. Except raw material for steel plants (including iron ore) and finished steel, all commodities have registered a growth over the corresponding period of last year.

With the revival of economic activity in the country and reduction in imported coal-based generation (due to high international prices of coal) the demand for domestic coal |

has seen a substantial growth which has been consistently met by railways. This is evident from the fact that between September 21 and March 22 Indian Railways has increased the loading of coal to power houses by 32 per cent. This trend has continued in April as well.

Backed by the healthy procurement by the FCI and bullish demand for export of wheat, there has been a growth of 95 percent in loading of food grains in April.

Further, there has been a 53 per cent increase in the loading of fertilisers. The growth container segment has been more than 10 per cent with domestic container segment clocking a growth of more than 25 per cent.