Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) has recorded a “huge” increase in the revenue earned from goods trains. Significant improvement has also been witnessed in revenue collection from goods carriers to and from neighbouring Bangladesh.
The NFR has already transported more than 3,000 inbound freight carrying trains since the starting of lockdown from March 25. Out of this, 682 freight carrying trains were unloaded during July, said Subhanan Chanda, chief public relations officer at NFR, in a statement.
Goods like rice, sugar, salt, edible oil, food grains, fodder, pulses, fertilizer, cement, coal, stone chips, iron/steel, potato, onion, sand, gypsum, maize, auto and container, among others, were being transported regularly to fulfil the local need.
Apart from that 60 goods laden rakes were interchanged with Bangladesh in July against 23 rakes in the same month of the previous year (July, 2019) which is an improvement of 160.8% and also the highest ever interchange with Bangladesh.
This includes 20 maize loaded rakes that were loaded for Bangladesh during July.
In order to increase the freight transportation volume, NF Railway has also set up business development units (BDU) at all the five divisions – Katihar, Alipurduar, Rangiya, Lumding and Tinsukia and at zonal headquarter level, as per the instructions issued by railway board.
These BDUs are having frequent interactions with trade and industry players within their respective areas to find new traffic for movement by train. This has become necessary because of the changing business scenario in the country in view of the COVID-19 pandemic and to keep the local economy moving.
As a result of various pro-active initiatives earnings from goods carrying trains also increased to Rs 178.37 crore for July.
It is significantly higher than the last year’s figure of Rs 143.40 for the corresponding month.
