The Indian Railways recorded a freight loading of 1154.67 million tonnes (MT) in the first nine months of the current fiscal year 4.1 percent higher than the corresponding months of the previous financial year, the Ministry of Railways said, adding that in the previous corresponding months, it had recorded freight loading of the 1109.38 MT.
The revenue from goods traffic earned by Indian Railways has gone up by Rs 4,626.92 crores to Rs 12,5106.2 crore during April-December in the current financial year from Rs 12,0479.3 crore in the same period last year.
During December 2023, originating freight loading of 138.99 MT was achieved against loading of 130.66 MT in December 2022, which is an improvement of 6.37 percent over last year.
Freight revenue of Rs 15,097.61 crore has been achieved in December 2023 against Rs 14,574.25 crore freight earnings in December 2022, thereby showing an improvement of about 3.59 percent over the last year.
Coal loading in December 2023 stood at 69 MT while Iron Ore freight stood at 16.54 MT, an official statement said.
Last month, the Ministry of Railways raised the freight rates for the transportation of automobiles on most of its modern automobile-carrier wagons.
The new rates became effective starting on December 1 and will remain valid till May 2024. After keeping the rates unchanged for two years to attract more traffic, the railway board, according to a November 30 circular, decided to revise rates for vehicles transported on its regular and high-speed newly modified goods (NMG) wagons.
In 2022, the national transporter said the 2021 revision in freight rates was done to encourage short-distance automobile traffic.
The higher freight loading is also part of Indian Railways plans to increase cargo movement through rail from around 1,500 million tonnes at the moment to 3,000 million tonnes by 2030
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