Railways sees 7.9 pc rise in freight movement in August, coal fuels growth

New Delhi, Sep 5 (FN Agency) National transporter Indian Railways has reported 7.86% year-on-year growth in freight loading in the month of August, 2022. The Railways recorded the total freight loading of 119.32 million tonnes (MT) in August this year, an incremental loading of 8.69 MT over August 2021. The growth was fuelled especially by coal loading. “The sustained efforts of Indian Railways to increase supply of coal to power houses, in close coordination with Ministry of Power and Coal, have been one of the key features of the freight performance in the month of August,” the national transporter said in a media release on Monday.

As per the official data, the cumulative freight loading during April-August period this year was 620.87 MT as against 562.75 MT achieved in 2021-22 registering a year-on-year growth of 10.32%. The Railways achieved an incremental loading of 9.2 MT in coal, followed by 0.71 MT in fertilizer, 0.68 MT in balance other goods and 0.62 MT containers. “Increase in automobile loading has been another highlight of Freight Business in FY 2022-23 and 2,206 rakes have been loaded in FY 2022-23 till August as compared to 1,314 rakes during the same period of last year i.e. a growth of 68%,” the media release said.