Indian Railways handles highest-ever freight in pandemic year, up 2% over last year

Braving the pandemic blues, the Indian Railways recorded its highest-ever freight loading, handling 1,232 million tonnes (MT) in 2020-21, up 2 percent over 2019-20.

This was achieved despite a huge drop in freight handling in the first four months of the financial year, due to COVID-19. Despite this, incremental loading of around 80 MT was achieved from the August to March period to surpass last year’s freight loading numbers, according to the latest data available with Indian Railways.

In this period, Indian Railways earned Rs 117,386 crore from freight loading. It was 3 per cent higher than the last year’s earnings from freight which was Rs 113,897 crore for the same period.

In the month of March 2021, the Indian Railways loading was 130Mt which was 27 per cent higher compared to last year’s loading for the same period. The Indian Railways maintained the momentum of highest ever loading in seven consecutive months from September, 2020 to March, 2021.

Among commodities with a significant spike during the year, foodgrains handling topped with a 68 percent YoY increase to 63 MT. As a sign of construction activities coming back on track, cement and iron and steel handling too jumped by 11 percent and 5 percent, respectively. The movement of chemical manures increased 6 percent, minerals and ores by 4 percent and container by 3 percent.

The only two commodities that were on the negative terrain were coal and petroleum products. Coal handling declined 8 percent to 542 MT while petroleum products declined by 5 percent to 43 MT.

A major reason for the current rise was the growth in non-traditional commodities like automobile, fly ash, stone, onion, chemical salt, sand, sugar and cotton. This led to a spike in the handling of other commodities to 26 percent. During the year, the average speed of freight trains was doubled to 44 kmph from 23 kilometres per hour.

To achieve this, the national transporter had taken several industry-friendly measures during the financial year. This includes the formation of business development units, launching of freight business development portal and introduction of a new iron ore policy. Tariff incentives like long lead discounts for commodities like coal, iron ore, finished steel, limestone and clinker and short lead discounts for all commodities except coal and iron ore also helped in shifting of a large share of commodities from road to rail route.

In addition, withdrawal of busy season surcharge of 15 percent, 5 percent and 25 percent discount on loaded and empty containers respectively, 40 percent discount for fly ash in railway wagons were other major tariff measures launched during the year.

Among the non-tariff incentives lined up during the year include liberalisation of the wagon and terminal investment schemes, reduction in punitive charges, opening up of all stations for parcel traffic, removing the limit of the number of co-users at sidings, improvement of good sheds and improving the fleet of wagons. For smaller transportation products also distance restriction was removed during the year.