Railways have taken a large number of tariff and non-tariff measures to attract more freight business to rail transport and for increasing the modal share of rail in the overall transport. These include:
- Setting up of Business Development Units to inter alia actively pursue and attract freight business for rail
- Withdrawal of 15% busy season surcharge on Railway freight for all commodities except Iron ore and Coal
- Concession on long lead traffic of 15 to 20% on Coal, lron-ore and iron & steel.
- Concession on short lead traffic of 10 to 50% for commodities (except Coal and iron-ore)
- 5% discount on loaded Containers & 25% on empty Containers and waiver of stabling charges on Container rakes during COVID till 31st Oct, 2020.
- Specific discounts on commodities such as fly ash.
- Rationalisation of classification of industrial salt.
- Making existing schemes like traditional empty flow directions, wagon investment schemes, PFT, Siding poIicy simplified and made more customer friendly.
- Debit/Credit scheme for Demurrage introduced for sidings.
- Launching of Freight Business Development Portal.
As a result of these efforts, in the current financial year, despite pandemic, Railways have achieved record freight loading in the last 5 months i.e. September, 2020 to January, 2021.
This information was given by the Minister of Railways, Commerce & Industry and Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha.
