Indian Railways achieves an originating Freight loading of 1512 MT in 2022-23
An incremental loading of 94 MT over the previous best of 1418 MT achieved in FY 2021-22 with a growth of ~7%
Indian Railways has recorded the best ever performance in its recorded history in terms of the output from the Freight Business in the Financial year 2022-23. As per the preliminary data IR has achieved an originating Freight loading of 1512 MT i.e an incremental loading of 94 MT over the previous best of 1418 MT achieved in FY 2021-22 with a growth of ~7%.
- The following graph depicts the growth of freight loading in the last 5 years
The freight transport unit i.e NTKM (Net tonne Kilometre) of Indian railways have also clocked an impressive growth rate of 10 % to breach the 900 Bn mark for the first time to reach 903 Bn NTKMs in the FY 2022-23 as against 820 Bn NTKMs achieved last year.
IR has achieved an incremental loading of 74.6 MT in Coal, followed by 8.7 MT in Balance other goods, 5.6 in Cement & Clinkers, 7.1 MT in Fertilizers, 5 MT in containers and 4 MT in POL.
The sustained efforts of Indian Railways to increase supply of Coal to Power houses, in close coordination with Ministry of Power and Coal, have been one of the key features of the freight performance of IR in FY 2022-23. The loading of Coal (both domestic and imported) to Power Houses has increased by 84 MT in FY 2022-23 with 569 MT Coal being moved to Power houses as against 485 MT last year, i.e. a growth of 17.3 %.
Along with excellent performance in transporting coal to the Power houses , Increase in automobile loading has been another highlight of Freight Business in FY 2022-23 and 5527 rakes have been loaded in FY 2022-23 as compared to 3344 rakes last year i.e. a growth of 65%.
The commodity wise growth number show that IR has achieved growth in almost all commodity segments with the following growth rates :
| Commodity | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | Variation (MT) | % variation |
| Coal | 653 | 728 | 75 | 11.4 % |
| Balance of Other Goods | 118 | 129 | 11 | 9.3 |
| Cement & Clinker | 138 | 144 | 6 | 4.3% |
| Fertilizer | 49 | 56 | 7 | 14.2 % |
| POL | 45 | 48 | 3 | 6 % |
| Container | 74 | 79 | 5 | 6.7% |
With this, Indian Railways has had a streak of 31 straight months of best ever monthly freight loading which had started in September 2020.
The year saw IR’s performance excelling in passenger front as well with number of passenger patronising IRs Passenger business increased more than 80% to reach 623 Cr as compared to 344 Cr last year.
The Gross Freight revenues of Indian Railways are expected to be more than Rs 1.6 Lakh Cr with growth rate of ~14% and simultaneously the Passenger revenues are expected to exceed Rs 60,000 Cr with growth of more than 60% over last year .This growth in Passenger business complemented with Growth in Freight Business has led for the first time for the combined freight and passenger revenue of IR to cross the Rs 2 Lakh Cr mark with combined revenues expected to exceed Rs 2.2 Lakh Cr.
