Despite Covid, Railways freight loading crossed last fiscal level

Despite Covid, Railways freight loading crossed last fiscal level

Despite the lockdown of months that began around this time last year, and the pandemic, Indian Railways has managed to transport more goods than during the same period last year.

Calling it a “great achievement,” the Railways Ministry said that as of March 12, its freight load figures for the year crossed with those of the same day last year.

With 1,145.68 million tons, the total of goods transported in this fiscal year so far is .07 million tons more. But sources said they indicated that the carrier is likely to end this fiscal year, by the end of this month, topping the previous fiscal year’s total cargo shipment number of 1,209 million tons.

“It is a great achievement given that the coronavirus pandemic had disrupted the rail movement,” Railroad Board Chairman Suneet Sharma told reporters. “This is despite the coronavirus crisis that had pushed us into a deficit of 70 MT from April to July.”

There has been a massive drop in the volume of coal that could be transported this year. At 502 million tons, it is about 50 million tons less than last fiscal year. Even the petroleum products transported, at 40.37 million tons, were about a couple of million tons less. Sharma said it was due to a lack of demand thanks to low industrial activity during the shutdown.

“We did well by carrying more items and expanding our cargo basket,” he said.

Data shared by the ministry shows that the railways began to change course in July and began to load more cargo in August than in the corresponding period of the previous year. However, there was still a deficit in his books. On Friday, I could finally erase that.

“We greatly diversify our transportation basket; he reached out to customers and brought in new items such as industrial salt, onion, automobile, cotton and others, ”said Sushant Mishra, additional member of Traffic Transportation.

Among the new products, salt, sugar, onion, sand and automobiles are products that the railways have moved away from the highway sector.

The data shows that, on a day-to-day basis, on March 11, Indian Railways cargo load was 4.07 million tons, 34% more than last year’s cargo for the same date (3.03 million tons).

The average speed of freight trains in March 2021 so far was 45.49 km / h, which is almost double compared to last year for the same period (23.29 km / h).