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New Delhi, Oct. 20 Indian Railways registered freight earnings of Rs 4,003.28 crore in September, up 14.24 per cent from the corresponding period last fiscal.

This was supported by robust earnings from commodities such as coal (Rs 1454.9 crore revenues with 13.56 per cent growth), iron ore (Rs 656.09 crore, 23.37 per cent), fertilisers (Rs 258.35 crore, 31.93 per cent), cement (Rs 328.67 crore, 9.77 per cent) and also its container business (Rs 208.85 crore, 40.42 per cent).

The earnings growth was also driven by freight rate hikes to some extent and does not reflect an equally proportional growth in loadings for many commodities. The commodity groups that witnessed decline in loadings are iron ore for exports, pig iron and finished steel from steel plants, and foodgrains.

Total freight loadings in September went up by 8.18 per cent with Railways moving 65.89 million tonne (mt) of goods. The loadings growth was supported by coal (28.59 mt, 11.42 per cent), fertilisers (4.07 mt, 25.62 per cent), containers (2.49 mt, 34.59 per cent), mineral oil (3.11 mt, 7.99 per cent) and cement (6.55 mt, 6.5 per cent).

Total iron ore loadings — at 10.17 mt — were down by 1.83 per cent this September (while iron ore for exports declined by 33.33 per cent; iron ore for steel plants and other domestic users went up by 9.68 per cent and 28.62 per cent, respectively).

For the April-September period, Railways earned Rs 25502.95 crore of revenue registering an increase of 18.91 per cent. It carried 401.89 mt of freight traffic during April-August 2008, up 8.55 per cent against the corresponding period last year.

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