Indian Railways Sets New Records in Freight Loading

Indian Railways is scaling new heights in its freight business as seen from the stellar performance of January 2024.

For the month January, highest ever loading of 142.7 Million Tonnes has been recorded with a growth of 6.5% on year-on-year basis. Indian Railways is continuing to act as the backbone for transportation fuelling the core economic activities.

This record loading has been achieved along with higher number of capacity augmentation works facilitated in tandem. A total of 476km length of track was commissioned across 25 sections vis-à-vis 308km across 20 sections last year.

The performance has been accomplished despite challenging adverse weather conditions, including an extensive period and geographical spread of fog.

This has been possible with the larger vision of the Government to give massive push in capacity augmentation, induction of new rolling stock, focus on improving operational efficiencies and business development activities to tap new traffic streams.

On cumulative basis from April 2023 - Jan 2024, freight loading of 1297.38 MT was achieved against last year’s loading of 1243.46 MT, an improvement of approximate 53.92 MT over last year’s loading for the same period. Railways has earned Rs 140623.4 Crore against Rs 135388.1 Crore over the last year which is an improvement of approx Rs 5235.30 Crore,  as compared to the same period of the last year.

During the month of January 2024, originating freight loading of 142.70 MT has been achieved against loading of 134.07 MT in January 23, which is an improvement of approx 6.43% over the last year. Freight revenue of Rs. 15514.82 Crores has been achieved in January 2024 against Rs 14908.82 Cr freight earnings in January 2023, thereby showing an improvement of about 4.06 % over the last year.

IR achieved loading of 71.45 MT in Coal, 17.01 MT in Iron Ore, 6.07 MT in Pig Iron and Finished Steel, 7.89 MT in Cement (Excl. Clinker), 5.52 MT in Clinker, 4.53 MT in Foodgrains, 5.27 MT in Fertilizers, 4.31 MT in Mineral Oil, 6.98MT in Containers and 10.20MT in Balance Other Goods during January, 2024.

Following the Mantra, “Hungry For Cargo”, IR has made sustained efforts to improve the ease of doing business as well as improve the service delivery at competitive prices. The customer centric approach and work of Business Development Units backed up by agile policy making helped Railways towards this significant achievement.

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YB/AS/PS