New Delhi: Indian Railways (IR) has achieved a major milestone in freight transportation by crossing the 1000 Million Tons (MT) mark in the current Financial Year (FY). Till date, the IR has loaded 1002 Million Tons of freight in the current year.

This is a stellar performance by the Indian Railways as a similar milestone during last FY was achieved on 24th December 2021 and as on 6th December 2021, Railways had achieved a freight loading of 926.4 Million Tons. During this financial year, IR has registered an incremental loading of 76.3 MT with growth rate of 8.25 per cent.

In revenue terms, the Railways freight revenues stood close to Rs 1,08,593 crore in the current year vis-a-vis Rs 93,532 Cr during last year till 6th December, thus showing an improvement of  16.10 per cent, said the Ministry of Railways in a statement.

Coal, the biggest commodity (48 pc) railway transports, contributed 485 Million Tons in this 1000 MT mark as against 425 Million Tons during last FY, thus showing 14.25 pc improvement. Coal is also the biggest contributor to incremental volumes with 60 MT of incremental traffic in the period.

The second biggest contributor to incremental volumes this year has been, Balance other goods segment - a basket of commodities like  stone, ash, bauxite, metals, automobiles, Gypsum salt, salt, etc., which has shown 10 pc improvement (83 MT in current FY as vis-à-vis 75 MT in last FY) in loading resulting in 19 pc increase in revenue.

Third biggest contributor to this growth has been Cement and clinker group, showing 8 pc improvement in volume (94.7 MT in current FY vis-a-vis 87.7 MT in last FY) followed by Fertilizers which registered a growth of 13.9 pc with incremental volumes of 4.7 MT. /BI/