Email
Print
ShareMumbai: Union minister for railways Mamata Banerjee, in her first rail budget speech, has made a landmark announcement that is expected to elevate the standard of freight movement by rail in the country.
Banerjee said a premium container service will be launched that will have an assured transit time or will be 'scheduled'.
The initiative will mark a new beginning in rail freight, which is labelled as untimely and slow, which causes business opportunity losses for all those who avail of it.
Unlike passenger trains that run on schedule -- well, more or less --no freight train,
be it container or other commodity, is run as a scheduled service.
Freight trains always make way for passenger trains and are run based on the availability of free tracks.
The new scheduled service will make container train operators more competitive compared with their road counterparts, experts said.
The initiative got the thumbs up from private container operators, who see this as a step towards optimisation of rail freight movement. "A scheduled service like the one announced by the government increases reliability and faster movement of goods, and there would be takers for the service," said Sachin Bhanushali, president, Gateway Rail Ltd.
Operators now await the pricing regime. "There is a huge market for time-sensitive cargo and people are ready to pay extra for the service. But how much extra remains to be seen," said Sankalp Shukla, managing director, B2B Inlogistics, a container train operator.
Manish Agarwal, executive director, KPMG, the consultant and audit firm, said pricing follows service quality and such services have worked well for other infrastructure segments.
A senior railway official said a policy change was being worked on to start guaranteed transit-time services.
The railways is currently servicing contracts with two power companies --- in Mangalore and Moradabad --- for transporting a certain quantity of coal every month.
"We would finalise the scheme after a discussion with private operators and for those who are interested," the official said.
Minister Banerjee in her budget also spoke of allowing private container operators access to private rail sidings owned by companies for captive usage, which improves the network of the operators.
Currently, private train operators either use the 56 terminals set up by Container Corporation of India (Concor) or the three private ones.
The permission will increase a basket of terminals for containers for container train operators who can look at extending their services to more regions.
This, in return, will be a source of revenue for terminal owners and increase haulage revenue for railways.
Ajay Mittal, chairman of Arshiya International, said this will also be a good revenue generation model for the railways in that it can utilise an already existing infrastructure.
"There are more than 1,000 under or un-utilised private terminals across the country, to which we will get access. This will also reduce the need to invest more in setting up new terminals," Mittal said.
