Texmaco seeks more orders from Railways

Wagon maker Texmaco on Thursday said that the continuing delay by the Indian Railways in releasing overdue wagon orders is having a substantial impact on its earnings, and that the Union railway minister Mamata Banerjee should ensure that private wagon manufacturing capacity is adequately utilised before similar additional public sector establishments are put up.

“There has been an abnormal delay due to some legal hurdles and we are still following it up. I have personally met the (Union) railway minister. I hope it will be resolved soon. We are heavily dependent on the Indian Railways (for business),” Texmaco chairman SK Poddar said at the company's 70th annual general meeting. In the firm's Annual Report 2009-10, additionally, it was stated that “even after the elapse of nearly 14 months, Indian Railways are yet to release the wagon orders for the year 2009-10, which severely contributed to the idling of production capacity.”

In the Railway Budget presented earlier this year, the target for freight loading for 2010-11 was kept at 944 million tonnes (MT), an increase of 54 MT over the previous year, along with a projection of freight throughput at 623 billion net tonne kilometer.

Also, Banerjee has set the procurement target for wagons during the year at 18,000 units, as well as the establishment of five state-of-the-art wagon factories in the joint-venture or PPP mode at Secunderabad, Barddhaman, Bhubaneshwar, Guwahati and Haldia. But Poddar indicated that, with the present idle capacity, the setting-up of new units immediately wasn't a requirement. “I have written to the railway minister telling her that, before setting-up new wagon factories, existing units should be allowed to produce to their full capacity,” he added.