New Delhi: Indian Railways has carried forward the momentum of the previous year in the year 2022-23 as well and has recorded the best Monthly freight loading of 125.50 MT in June’22. The incremental loading in June has been 12.72 MT i.e. growth of 11.28% over the previous best June figures achieved in 2021. With this, Indian Railways has had 22 straight months of best monthly freight loading.
This growth has been fuelled by incremental loading of 13.19 MT in Coal, followed by 1.68 MT in Cement & Clinker, 1.57 MT in Balance other goods, and 0.64 MT in Food grains.
The cumulative freight loading in the first quarter of the year has been 379.4 MT as against 339.3 MT achieved in 2021-22 i.e. an incremental loading of 40.09 MT, with a growth of 12% over the same period last year.
The freight NTKMs (Net tonne kilometers) has increased from 63.3 Billion in June ’21 to 75.8 Billion in June’22 registering a growth of 20%. This is because apart from the increase in Freight loading there has been an increase in Freight leads, which has increased by 7.4%. The cumulative NTKMs in the first three months have also grown by 19.8%.
The sustained efforts of Indian Railways to increase the supply of Coal to Powerhouses, in close coordination with the Ministry of Power and Coal, have been one of the key features of the freight performance in June. The loading of Coal (both domestic and imported) to Power Houses has increased by 15.9 MT in June with 51.2MT Coal being moved to Powerhouses as against 35.3 MT last year, i.e. a growth of 45%. Cumulatively, in the first quarter of the year, IR has loaded more than 34.7 MT of extra coal to Power Houses as compared to the same period of last year with a growth of more than 30%.
In terms of the number of rakes of coal loaded per day for Powerhouses, Indian Railways has moved more than 420 rakes of domestic coal and more than 32 rakes of imported coal daily over longer distances. This is reflected in the increased lead of Thermal coal from 457 Km to 565 Km.
With these sustained efforts, the trend of reducing coal stocks at Power houses has been reversed and the coal stocks at the Powerhouses have again started improving regularly.
| Commodity | Variation (MT) | % variation |
| Coal | 13.19 | 26.23 |
| Cement and Clinker | 1.68 | 15.38 |
| Food Grains | 0.64 | 11.55 |
| POL | 0.47 | 12.90 |
| Containers | 0.32 | 5.13 |
| Balance Other Goods | 1.57 | 17.37 |
(Vinayak)
