Hyderabad: South Central Railway to lay focus on freight business

Hyderabad: As per the directions of the Railway Board, Business Development Units (BDUs) have been set up at both zonal and divisional levels of SCR to focus on increasing the freight business and double it by 2024. As part of it, Gajanan Mallya, General Manager, South Central Railway conducted a review meeting on various aspects related to BDUs. All the BDU's nominated coordinators over the zone joined the meeting through web conference.

The members of Business Development Committee had regular interactions with both the existing and new customers, so that focus was given equally to improve the freight traffic in both the segments. BDUs had frequent interaction with the trade and industry to explore the possibility of attracting additional freight traffic to Railways.

During the web meet, Gajanan Mallya advised the members to focus on speed of freight trains duly marking predetermine path and time. He also stressed to improve the loading of non-core traffic. The General Manager instructed the divisions to make efforts for long time parcel agreements. He suggested the committee members to explain about various freight concessions offered by Railways to customers and also to assist them in availing the policy / transportation benefits in order to capture new traffic.

During the meeting, the committee and coordinators of the zone expressed their views and conveyed few suggestions regarding the BDUs. General Manager assured them that all possible help would be rendered to the BDUs in capturing new traffic.

K. Siva Prasad, Principal Chief Operations Manager; JK Jain, Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer; Brajendra Kumar, Principal Financial Advisor; G John Prasad, Principal Chief Commercial Manager; Sanjeev Agarwal, Principal Chief Engineer; Divisional Railway Managers of all the six divisions and senior Officials participated in the web conference.