Indian Railways achieves 1,297 million tonnes freight loading from April 2023 to January 2024

New Delhi [India], February 2 : Indian Railways is scaling new heights in its freight business, as seen from the stellar performance of January 2024.
"For the month of January, the highest ever loading of 142.7 million tonnes has been recorded, with a growth of 6.5 per cent on a year-on-year basis. Indian Railways is continuing to act as the backbone for transportation, fueling the core economic activities," as per a press release from the Indian Railways.
This record loading has been achieved along with a higher number of capacity augmentation works facilitated in tandem. A total of 476 km of track was commissioned across 25 sections, vis-a-vis 308 km across 20 sections last year.
"The performance has been accomplished despite challenging adverse weather conditions, including an extensive period and the geographical spread of fog," as per the release.
This has been possible with the larger vision of the government to give a massive push in capacity augmentation, the induction of new rolling stock, a focus on improving operational efficiencies and business development activities to tap new traffic streams.
"On a cumulative basis, from April 2023 - January 2024, freight loading of 1297.38 MT was achieved against last year's loading of 1243.46 MT, an improvement of approximately 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 approximately Rs 5235.30 crore as compared to the same period of the last year," the release stated.
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 per cent over the last year. Freight revenue of Rs. 15514.82 crore has been achieved in January 2024 against Rs 14908.82 crore in freight earnings in January 2023, thereby showing an improvement of about 4.06 per cent 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 fertilisers, 4.31 MT in mineral oil, 6.98 MT in containers, and 10.20 MT in Balance Other Goods during January 2024," the release stated.
Following the mantra "Hungry for Cargo," IR has made sustained efforts to improve the ease of doing business as well as improve service delivery at competitive prices. The customer-centric approach and work of Business Development Units, backed up by agile policymaking, helped Railways towards this significant achievement.