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New Delhi, Sept. 25 Transporting goods on trains will be costlier by 5-7 per cent with effect from October 1. This will be due to the imposition of busy season surcharge, in line with Indian Railways earlier strategy of increasing the fares through imposition of various surcharges such as busy season and congestion surcharge.

Indian Railways tends to hide these freight rate hikes by calling them measures undertaken as a part of its “dynamic pricing policy”.

So, for the second time this fiscal, Railways will impose a busy season surcharge of 5 per cent on coal and coke; and 7 per cent on all other commodities. The only exception is container traffic which has been spared the surcharge. The surcharge is for the October 1-March 31 period. Coal and coke account for 40 per cent share of rail freight traffic. Incidentally, Railways had issued the same level of busy season surcharges for the March 1-June 30 period as well.

Thus, as has been the trend during past few years, rail customers end up paying busy season surcharges for the entire year barring a three month period of (July 1-September 30) period. In fact of Railways had its way, its freight customers would not have been spared of a 5-7 per cent surcharge level even in the remaining three months this fiscal.

Following the diesel price hike in June this year, it had planned to hike freight charges for a host of commodities including ores and minerals, petro-products, coke and coal, fertilisers, foodgrains by 5-7 per cent by imposition of a “special supplementary surcharge”. However, it had to roll back the special supplementary surcharge under pressure to keep in line with the Government’s strategy of containing inflation.

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