National state-run transporter, Indian Railways (IR) has announced a ‘premium freight policy’ offering assured and fast allocation of rakes to user industries, a government official said on Thursday, December 24.
He said that under the policy, freight train users can place priority request on two days of a week—Monday and Friday indicating dates on which they seek allocation of rakes and IR will allocate them on priority basis subject to loading to be done by the user.
IR will charge a premium of five percent above the normal freight charges to be paid in advance and in case of failure to allocate rakes on priority basis on committed dates premiums will be adjusted with normal freight rates to be paid by the user, the official said.
The launch of premium freight policy is expected to support the rebound of freight traffic achieved by the transporter after the pandemic with total freight handled by it during November at 109.68 million mt, recording a nine percent growth over the corresponding month of the previous year.
During November 2020, IR achieved iron ore freight loading of 13.77 million mt and coal loading of 48.48 million mt.
“The November freight loading has been the highest during the current year. Higher freight traffic despite spate of festival holidays and cyclones in several parts of the country soon after the national lockdown indicated that industrial activity has been rapid,” Indian Railways Board, chairman, Vinod Kumar Yadav said.
