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East Coast Railway (ECoR), a major freight loading zonal railway, is finding it difficult to hit the targeted freight traffic of 112.5 million tonnes (mt) set for the current fiscal.
It only hopes that the Railway Board will reduce the target in tune with the downward revision of the Indian Railways' total freight traffic target from 944 mt to 924 mt. for 2010-11.
“We will be lucky if we can achieve 110 mt in 2010-11 against previous year's 104 mt”, observes a spokesman for ECoR.
“Till February, i.e. April to February, we've handled 98.59 mt against 101.28 mt targeted for the period”.
Iron ore loading K-K line
The shortfall will be entirely on iron ore account despite satisfactory movement of the ore traffic along the trouble-prone 450-km long Kirandul-Kottavalsa (K-K) line used for transporting the mineral from Bailadila mines in Chhattisgarh to Visakhapatnam, partly for exports and partly to meet the requirement of the RINL steel plant. “We're now handling 14 rakes a day on the K-K line, best ever so far this year”, he said.
Nayagarh area
But then the iron ore loading at Nayagarh area leaves much to be desired.
There was virtually no loading at Nayagarh in the first quarter, limited loading in the second and third quarter due to myriad restrictions imposed by the Orissa Government to stop illegal mining and transportation of the ore.
Only in the current month, the average daily loading at 2.8 rakes has been close to the capacity of three rakes.
No wonder, against the target of 21.58 mt till February, the actual iron ore throughput was 18.58 mt.
“There is no way we can hope to achieve the target of 24.19 mt set for the whole year”, he observed.
Coal loading at Talcher
Despite shortfall in coal loading at Talcher mines entailing a drop in throughput, (till February the throughput was 54.86 mt against the target of 55.57 mt), the target of 61.95 mt set for the whole year, it was hoped, would be achieved.
coal imports
The optimism has been fuelled by the jump in the volume of imported coal at all the three ports, Paradip, Gangavaram and Visakhapatnam, served by ECoR.
The average daily loading of imported coal at the ports till February was 21.5 rakes against 19.3 in the same period of last year.
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