Railway Freight Earnings Miss April-Sept Target By Rs 162 Cr

Unless the trend changes drastically, the railways is likely to fall short of the targeted Rs 16,975 crore in freight revenue in 1996-97. Rail Bhavan is concerned over the matter, but is putting up a brave front.

We are watching the situation with our fingers crossed, a top insider said.

A shortfall in the freight traffic earning is bound to upset the railways resource mobilisation plan. This in turn will affect the procurement of the rolling stock and financing of new and on-going projects.

In terms of quantity, the railways has moved more tonnage during April-September. It is only in terms of value that the target has been missed by a wide margin. While the movement of low-revenue-yielding commodities has gone up, that of high-revenue-yielding products like POL, fertilisers, iron & steel products, cement and coal for washeries has dropped sharply.

 

These items also witnessed sluggish economic activity in the period.

The higher freight movement in terms of quantity shows that the railways desperate to put up a good showing and meet the target in terms of tonnage. This is unlikely to be of much help unless the movement of goods improves in the key sectors.

This aspect becomes evident by the internal statistics of the railways for April-September. The movement of freight in the period was 193.42 million tonnes, 11.92 million tonnes more than the level in the corresponding period last year. In fact, the figure exceeded the tonnage target for the period by 2.42 million tonnes.

But the freight revenue, according to the documents available with Business Standard, fell short of the target for the period by a whopping Rs 162.38 crore. The budget had estimated the goods revenue in the first half of the current financial year at Rs 7,965.15 crore. But the actual revenue was Rs 7,802.77 crore only.

During April-August, the movement of POL was 11.48 million tonnes against the target of 12.05 million tonnes, that of fertilisers was 7.22 million tonnes against the targeted 8.96 million tonnes and of raw materials for iron & steel 15.50 million tonnes against the projected 16.80 million tonnes.