The Railways is focused on offering better and efficient freight services, for which it has taken/is taking a number of key operational and infrastructure augmentation measures, the Minister of Railways and Commerce and Industry, Mr Piyush Goyal, informed Parliament last week, as per a communiqué.
The Railways registered a growth of 5 per cent in freight traffic in 2018-19 as compared to the previous year, he pointed out.
Among the steps taken to boost freight traffic are:
- Long-term tariff contract with major customers that envisages growth and retention of traffic by offering incentive over benchmark.
- Traditional Empty Flow Direction (TEFD) policy offering freight rebate to customers in notified streams, enabling mutual gains to both customers and Railways.
iii. Schemes such as General Purpose Wagon Investment Scheme (GPWIS), Liberalised Wagon Investment Scheme (LWIS), Special Freight Train Operator (SFTO) and Automobiles Freight Train Operator (AFTO) have been launched.
- Container traffic has been given incentives in the form of :
* 25 per cent concession in empty haulage
* Denotification of additional commodities to Freight All Kind (FAK) carriage
* Launch of multiple Railway Receipt (RR) and electronic transmission of RR
- Rationalisation of Terminal Access Charge (TAC) to dual operation to single charge.
- Freight rationalisation @8.75 per cent w.e.f. 01.11.18 leaving essential goods like foodgrains, salt intact. Other commodities’ freight, like fertilisers, cement, POL also kept intact in the interest of farmers, the infrastructure requirements of the economy, and to keep general inflationary components pegged down as fuel is vital in product pricing.
Besides, various initiatives have been undertaken by the Railways towards capacity augmentation works including the following:-
* There has been an increase of about 42 per cent in capital expenditure in the last four years for financing of various capacity augmentation works like Dedicated Freight Corridors, high-speed rail, high-capacity rolling stock, last mile rail linkage, port connectivity, etc.
* Also, the Railways has issued a policy framework for participative models for attracting investments in rail connectivity and capacity augmentation projects from sea ports, large mines, logistics parks and other industries/industrial clusters. Under participative models, 11 projects of Rs 4,000 crore have been implemented, 12 projects of Rs 20,877 crore are under implementation and 7 projects of Rs 13,046 crore have been granted in-principle approval by the Ministry, the release said.
