The half yearly report card for Railway freight loading pattern show its cash cow — the South Eastern zone has fallen behind target.

Figures for the period up to September reveals that the South Eastern zone has logged 94.85 million tonnes of freight compared to the targeted 95.10 million tonnes.

The zone accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the freight traffic for the railways. So the fall is a matter of concern.

The data also shows that along with the South Eastern zone, South Central, Western and Central zones have also missed the target.

Among the zones that have managed to achieve the targets are Eastern and Northern. The latter has seen a freight loading of more than 23 million tonnes against the 18.million tonnes target in the April to September period.

This is 5 per cent more than the target and 7 per cent more than that achieved during the the same period last fiscal.

However, this has been possible because of the huge increase in food grains loading for the drought hit areas of UP, Rajasthan and Punjab.

The dip in the performance of both SE and South Central reflects the slowdown in the economy reflected in the dip in total carriage of coal and iron ore by railways.

Railway officials said the slowdown in the performance of the infrastructure sector in September indicates that it will be difficult for the railways to achieve the freight loading target of 510 million tonnes for fiscal 2002-03.

In terms of revenue too the performance of the important zones is a cause for concern. For instance the SE zone has recorded a fall in earnings of Rs 10.35 crore over that of last year for September.

It was Rs 183.47 crore in September 2001-02. In percentage terms it is a drop of 5.65 per cent.

The most impressive performance has been of Northern zone which has recorded an Rs 140.22 crore rise in ear month compared to last years level of Rs 170.82 crore.