Concor halves capex plan

Container Corporation of India (Concor), the state-owned rail rake operator, has halved its capital expenditure plan for the current financial year to Rs350 crore.

The company’s top management has said the decision has been taken due to a drop in the domestic segment volumes.
Concor’s business is typically divided into two segments — Exim and domestic. Exim refers to cargo movement between hinterland and a port meant for export- import purpose, while domestic refers to cargo moved for consumption within the country.

For the third quarter ended December, Concor’s total domestic volumes fell 17.4%, while Exim volumes grew 7.3%.

“The decline in domestic volumes is due to haulage rate revision, due to which we cannot move certain commodities such as cement, and also other market conditions,” said Anil
Gupta, managing director, Concor.

He expects to end the financial year with a 13-14% decline in domestic volumes and 7.5% growth in Exim volumes.

Overall, domestic and Exim put together, the official expects volumes to grow at 2-2.5% for the current fiscal.
The earlier planned Rs700 crore capex was to be utilised to acquire around 20 rakes and for certain other activities.

However, the rake buy has now been trimmed to 5-6 rakes.
Concor currently operated around 208 high-speed rakes.
The company has till date added only two rakes in the current fiscal.

Top company officials, however, are confident volumes on the domestic side would improve in the next fiscal.

“We expect volumes growth of 12-15% on the domestic side in fiscal 2013 on a year-on-year basis on the lower base of fiscal 2012. This growth estimate is on an expectation of certain policy changes to address the main issues in the domestic segment,” Gupta said.