Indian Railways records best ever monthly freight loading of 131.6MT in May this yr

New Delhi: Indian railways on Thursday said it has carried forward the momentum of the previous year in the year 2022-23 as well, and has recorded best ever Monthly freight loading of 131.6 MT in May’22 . The incremental loading in the month of May has been 16.89 MT i.e. a growth of 14.7 % over the previous best May figures achieved in 2021.
According to an official statement issued on Thursday Indian Railways has had 21 straight months of best ever monthly freight loading.
This growth has been fuelled by incremental loading of 10.7 MT in Coal, followed by 2.8 MT in Cement & Clinker , 1.5 MT in Food grains and 1.4 MT in Balance other goods. Except Raw material for Steel Plants (including Iron Ore) and Finished steel, all commodities have registered a volume growth over the corresponding period of last year.
The cumulative freight loading in the first two months of the year has been 253.9 MT as against 226.5 MT achieved in 2021-22 i.e. an incremental loading of 27.4 MT, with a growth of 12% over same period last year.
The freight NTKMs (Net tonne kilometers) have increased from 65.3 Billion in May ’21 to 79.1 Billion in May’22 registering a growth of 21 %. This is because of the fact that , apart from increase in Freight loading there has been an increase in Freight leads, which has increased from 569 KM in May’21 to 600 KM in May’22, registering an increase of 5.5%. The cumulative NTKMs in the first two months have also grown from 128 billion in 2021-22 to 153 Billion in 2022-23, with a growth of over 19 %.
The sustained efforts of Indian Railways to increase supply of Coal to Power houses, in close coordination with Ministry of Power and Coal, have been one of the key features of the freight performance in the month of May. The loading of Coal to Power Houses (both domestic and imported) has increased by more than 11 MT in May with 52.4MT Coal being moved to Power houses as against 41.01 MT last year, i.e. a growth of 28%. Cumulatively, in the first two months of the year IR has loaded more than 18 MT extra coal to Power Houses as compared to same period of last year with a growth of 24%.
In terms of number of rakes of coal loaded per day for Power houses , IR has moved more than 421 rakes of domestic coal and more than 22 rakes of imported coal on a daily basis over longer distances as is reflected in increased lead of Thermal coal from 501 Km to 560 Km.
With these sustained efforts , the trend of reducing coal stocks at Power houses has been reversed and the coal stocks at the Power houses have again started improving on a regular basis.