Indian Railway freight and goods grow by 1.5% in October to 131 million tonnes

 Indian Railways reported a growth of 1.5% in goods transported during October, totaling 131 million tonnes (mt), according to data from the railways ministry. This reflects a significant decrease compared to a cargo growth of 8.5% in October 2022. Officials noted that coal traffic on the railway network saw an increase of 4.3% in the previous month.

Coal accounts for 50% of the total freight volume for the railways and is projected to generate ?91,000 crore for the national transporter in the fiscal year 2024-25, according to government estimates.

 

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The previous month was also the hottest October in over a century. Volumes of containers grew by 7.7 percent in the previous month, while miscellaneous goods and clinker traffic increased by 7 percent each.

So far in this financial year (FY25), freight volumes on Indian Railways stand at 906.9 mt, which is merely 2.2 percent higher than the previous year. In the commodity mix, key materials like coal have registered a 6 percent growth in the current financial year, while iron ore (second largest by volume) traffic has grown by 1.1 percent. 

Container volumes across the financial year have grown by 3.3 percent, and miscellaneous goods – a benchmark for the railways' efforts at freight basket diversification - have remained flat at 0.9 percent.

The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) anticipates freight traffic on railways to rise year-on-year by 3.3 percent in 2024-25. “This is quite a deceleration compared to the 15 percent rise seen in 2021-22, 6.6 percent rise in 2022-23, and a 5.2 percent growth registered in the previous financial year,” it said in a forecast in October.

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