Coal boosts Railways’ monthly freight loading in May to record high

Indian Railways on Wednesday said it has recorded its best ever monthly freight loading in May 2022 at 131.6 million tonnes (MT) aided by transporting higher quantities of coal, a key resource for generating power, as well as supplying more cement, clinker and food grains.

“Indian railways has carried forward the momentum of the previous year in the year 2022-23 as well, and has recorded best ever monthly freight loading of 131.6 MT in May 2022. With this, Indian Railways has had 21 straight months of best ever monthly freight loading,” Indian Railways(IR) said.

The incremental loading in the month of May stands at 16.89 MT, which is a growth of 14.7 per cent over the previous best May figures achieved in 2021, it added. “This growth has been fuelled by incremental loading of 10.7 MT of coal, followed by 2.8 MT of cement and clinker, 1.5 MTof food grains and 1.4 MT of other goods. Except raw materials for steel plants (including iron ore) and finished steel, all commodities have registered a volume growth over the corresponding period of last year,” IR noted.

The cumulative freight loading in the first two months of the year (April and May) has been 253.9 MT as against 226.5 MT achieved in 2021-22, an incremental loading of 27.4 MT, with a growth of 12 per cent over the same period last year, it said.

“The sustained efforts of Indian Railways to increase supply of coal to power houses, in close coordination with the Ministry of Power and Coal, have been one of the key features of the freight performance in the month of May,” IR said.

Supply to power houses

The loading of coal to power houses (both domestic and imported) has increased by more than 11 MT in May with 52.4 MT coal being moved to power houses as against 41.01 MT last year, a growth of 28 per cent. Cumulatively, in the first two months of the year Indian Railways has loaded more than 18 MT extra coal to power houses as compared to the same period of last year with a growth of 24 per cent.

In terms of number of rakes of coal loaded per day for power houses, Indian Railways has moved more than 421 rakes of domestic coal and more than 22 rakes of imported coal on a daily basis over longer distances as is reflected in increased lead of thermal coal from 501 Km to 560 Km.

“With these sustained efforts, the trend of reducing coal stocks at power houses has been reversed and the coal stocks at the power houses have again started improving on a regular basis,” Indian Railways said.