CHENNAI: Southern Railway has registered a substantial increase in freight loading and revenue during the period from April to October 2021. The zone loaded 16.682 million tonnes of originating freight in the first seven months, registering 12.75% growth in comparison to that in the corresponding period of last financial year which stood at 14.796 million tonnes.
There is also a rise of 26.47% in originating freight revenue in comparison to the first seven months of the last fiscal.
From April to October, the revenue generation from originating freight loading is Rs 1516.95 crore against Rs 1,199.50 crore in the same period of the previous year. Besides, the originating freight revenue is 2.61% higher than the board’s target for April-October 2021.
The main commodities of freight loading during this year are iron and steel, raw material for steel plants, coal, cement, fertilizer, petroleum products, and containers.
Southern Railway has loaded 7.77 million tonnes of coal, 0.94 million tonnes of cement, 2.182 million tonnes of fertilizers, 2.145 tones of POL, and 0.938 million tonnes of food grains.
The newly formed business development units (BDUs) have helped in boosting newer freight. The zone has registered an incremental revenue of Rs.86.7 crore from new commodities captured during April-October.
During this period, 9.39 lakh tonnes of new commodities were loaded in 322 rakes. The sustained efforts of divisional BDUs have helped capture new traffic such as construction machinery, harvester machines, power tillers, motor tractors, edible oil, laterite, motor cars, deoiled cake, slag, and others.
