Indian railways has recorded best ever September Monthly freight loading of 115.80 MT in Sep’22. The incremental loading in the month of September has been 9.7 MT i.e. a growth of 9.15% over the previous best September figures achieved in 2021.With this, Indian Railways has had 25straight months of best ever monthly freight loading.
The Railways has achieved an incremental loading of 6.8 MT in Coal, followed by 1.2 in Iron Ore and 1.22 MT in Balance other goods, 0.4 MT in Cement & Clinker and 0.3 MT in Fertilizers. Increase in automobile loading has been another highlight of Freight Business in FY 2022-23 and 2712 rakes have been loaded in FY 2022-23 till September as compared to 1575 rakes during the same period of last year i.e. a growth of 72.2 %.
The cumulative freight loading from 1st April’2022 to 30th September’2022 has been 736.68 MT as against 668.86 MT achieved in 2021-22 i.e. an incremental loading of 67.83 MT, with a growth of 10.14 % over same period last year.The freight NTKMs (Net tonne kilometers) have increased from 63.43 Billion in September ’21 to 69.97 Billion in September’22 registering a growth of 10.3 %. The cumulative NTKMs in the first Half of the year have also grown by 17.1 %.
The sustained efforts of Indian Railways to increase supply of Coal to Power houses, in close coordination with Ministries of Power and Coal, has again been one of the key features of the freight performance in the month of September. The loading of Coal (both domestic and imported) to Power Houses has increased by 6.2 MT in September,with 42.00 MT Coal being moved to Power houses as against 35.8 MT last year, i.e. a growth of 17.3%. Cumulatively, in the first Half of the year, IR has loaded more than 64.53 MT extra coal to Power Houses as compared to same period of last year, with a growth of more than 29.3%.
The commodity wise growth number show that IR has achieved impressive growth in almost all commodity segments with the following growth rates :
| Commodity | Variation (MT) | % variation |
| Coal | 6.8 | 14 |
| Cement and Clinker | 0.4 | 3.4 |
| POL | 0.29 | 8.19 |
| Fertilizer | 0.33 | 7.9 |
| Containers ( Domestic) | 0.09 | 6.15 |
| Balance Other Goods | 1.2 | 14.1 |
| Iron ore | 1.2 | 10.8 |