By IANS
New Delhi : Indian Railways have set a target of carrying 850 million tonnes (MT) of freight in 2008-09, going up to 1,100 MT by the last year of the Eleventh Five Year Plan, 2011-2012.
Railway Board Chairman K.C. Jena said Wednesday that the railways have already shown record loading of 794 MT freight in the financial year 2007-08 which closed Monday.
“This exceeds the initial budgeted target of 785 MT as well as the revised target of 790 MT. With this, the railways have achieved a growth rate of nine percent compared to the previous year,” Jena said.
“The railways have also simultaneously achieved the highest ever incremental loading during a single financial year to the tune of 65.59 MT, beating the previous year’s record of 64.61 MT.”
Claiming that in the period between 2003-04 and 2007-08, average growth in freight loading was to the tune of 10.56 percent per annum, he said this was all the “more spectacular considering the normally long gestation periods in infrastructure sectors like the railways”.
Jena stressed that coal remained the backbone of Indian Railways’ loading revenue and constituted 42.4 percent of the total loading revenue. It grew by 7.47 percent last year. But the highest growth took place in the loading of iron ore, which went up by 19 percent.
Similarly, there was growth in the loading of petroleum oil lubricant (POL) products. “In the last four years, POL loading has been growing at a steady rate of 3.34 percent,” the chairman said.
“Investments on the eastern and western dedicated freight corridors will commence shortly.”
He said Japanese investment for the western corridor was likely to arrive in the latter half of 2009. “For the eastern corridor which is being developed with World Bank funding it may happen earlier.”