Will regain lost volume in coming months: Concor

Goods and services tax (GST) is going to have a strong impact on not only the company but also the entire Indian economy, says P Alli Rani, Director (Finance), Container Corporation of India (Concor). Praising the government's budget, she says Concor, being a logistics service providor, has got whatever it expected from the budget and has since received a lot of relief.This, Rani says, will in the coming months, help it regain their lost volumes. Rani had previously given a guidance of a 5 percent rise in volumes in FY17.Asked about the market share, she said it is too early to comment, but confirmed the company's rail business market share stood at 76 percent. With the removal of port congestion charge in the budget, she says its port market share will go beyond 20 percent soon.Below is the verbatim transcript of P Alli Rani's interview to Latha Venkatesh & Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18.Sonia: Do you think goods and services tax (GST) will be passed in the monsoon session and what are the benefits to the company due to GST?A: From the trade point of view or from the logistics service provider point of view, we are all looking forward to the passing of GST bill and. However, all the benefits which accrue from this new system of taxation would have a great impact on the entire economy. Latha: You had given aggressive volume guidance for FY17 if 12.5 percent. How is the Q1 looking so far? Is it looking as good?A: We have got what we wanted from the Budget. So we have had some relaxations in some tough service tax guidelines. We also had some sort of relief from tariff. The port congestion charge has been removed. All these things we were looking forward to, we have got, so now we are seeing that there is more volumes and for us we feel that we would be able to now get back some of the volumes which we had lost. So it is positive. However, it may take some more time and we can say we have got back all the volume and everything is hunky-dory but that will take a couple of months more.Sonia: What is the market share of freight versus road and have you seen any kind of improvement in Q1?A: Right now it is stable. It is too early to work out market share and we are around 73 percent of the total in the rail share but when compared to road, we should still be hovering around 20 and not less; maybe more than that. However, we have an entire year with us and with the removal of port congestion charge; we will be able to see the port share go up beyond 20 percent.