The Hindu Business Line : Bumper year forecast for South Eastern Rly — Spurt in demand for rakes by sponge iron units

THE 2005-06 financial year is expected to be bumper year for the South Eastern Railway (SER), the freight-earning blue chip outfit of the Indian Railways. It is expected to contribute a surplus of around Rs 700 crore for the Indian Railways' corpus during 2004-05, riding on an operating ratio of 86.10 per cent (i.e., some 86 paise spent to earn Rs 100).

Talking to presspersons here at the sidelines of the 50th Railway Week celebrations of SER, Mr R.R. Bhandari, General Manager, said the system was faced with a huge demand of some 26,000 rail rake indents (already registered with the Railways), "and we must take full advantage of this situation." Each rake, on an average, carries a load of 3,500 tonnes.

Mr Bhandari said there has been a sudden spurt in movement of iron ore sought by the sponge iron units, which have sprung up all over the place. Asked how the Railways planned to meet the situation, he said wagon allotments were on the basis of first-come first-served, but according to two lists of `normal' (for two days in a week) and `premium' (five days in a week) categories, excluding, however, the finished goods for steel plant which receive the highest priority.

The premium and normal lists denote the priority and non-priority categories, respectively. He expected a more than 10 per cent growth in freight earnings during 2005-06. Dwelling on the proven capabilities of SER in terms of gross earnings, which have shown a substantial jump during 2004-05, Mr Bhandari said the Railways should be able to achieve an incremental loading of at least 10 million tonnes (mt) against the few MT achieved in the previous fiscal.

He informed that SER has set for itself an internal target of 85 mt of originating freight loading, which was tantamount to a growth of 15 per cent. "We need to move towards per day earnings of Rs 12-13 crore from the current Rs 2-2.5 crore per day, which would entail gross earnings of around Rs 4,500-4,600 crore for the fiscal."

He described SER's performance on all fronts during 2004-05 as five times better than average, particularly in personnel management.

During 2004-05, the Railways loaded 73 mt of originating freight, surpassing the target of 71 mt set by the Railway Board. Mr Bhandari said unusually, during 2004-05, SER carried a much higher 157.6 million passengers, against the 145.7 million during 2003-04. He put the expected total earnings during the period at Rs 3,700 crore, with passenger traffic earnings accounting for a new high of Rs 600 crore. The expenses are placed at Rs 2,451.26 crore.

Admitting that the Howrah terminal was already too congested, Mr Bhandari said special efforts have to be mounted for attracting tourist traffic to Digha from the Shalimar terminal.

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