East Coast Railway remains India’s most profitable railway zone with freight traffic crossing the 200 million ton mark for the second year in a row.
With an operating ratio of 47.71%, ECoR remains the most profitable zone of Indian Railways. Operating Ratio is the term used to measure how much the zone has to spend to earn a rupee. In the case of ECoR, 0.47 paise are spent to earn a rupee.
ECoR’s Operating Ratio performance is due to high freight traffic that the zone handles efficiently. The zone achieved freight loading of 205 million tons of freight in the financial year 2020-21. ECoR broke the previous record of the highest freight loading of 202.56 million tons achieved by the erstwhile undivided South Eastern Railway in the financial year 2002-03.
The period also saw increase of average speed of freight trains by 117% as compared to corresponding period of last year.
In 2020-21 financial year, East Coast Railway has carried 112.46 million tons of coal, 29.49 million tons of iron ore, 18.23 million tons of iron & steel, 7.62 million tons of raw materials for steel plants, 6.18 million tons of fertilizer, 3.14 million tons of container traffic, 2.76 million tons of food grains, 2.91 million tons of petroleum products and 22.09 million tons of other commodities. Coal contributed to 55% and Iron ore contributed to 14% of overall loading.
During the period, East Coast Railway loaded 42.9 rakes per day from Talcher area, 21.1 rakes per day from Paradeep area, 14.1 rakes per day from Dhamra area, 11.7 rakes per day in KK Line, 16.5 rakes per day from Steel Plants, 7 rakes per day of Aluminum over ECoR jurisdiction.
All ECoR divisions contributed to loading this year. Khurda Road division has bettered its target of 127.02 million tons by achieving 131.37 MT. Khurda Road and Waltair divisions have obtained 4th and 6th position respectively in Indian Railways among all zones in freight loading. Sambalpur division has bettered its last year loading of 11.48 MT by loading 12.37 MT of freight this financial.
To achieve this loading figure, East Coast Railway has utilised 8,447 Wagons per day during the period, i.e. about 154.8 Rakes/Trains per day. During the period, South East Central Railway (SECR) has loaded 186.51 million tons of freight and South Eastern Railway (SER) has loaded 175.79 million tons of freight and became the second and third highest loading zonal Railway, respectively.
During the financial year 2020-21, Indian Railways has loaded 1,232.64 million tons of freight registering a growth of 23.32 million tons more than the previous financial year. In 2019-20 Indian Railways has loaded 1,209.32 million tons of freight traffic. It is mentioned here that, East Coast Railway has loaded 16.62% share of total loading by Indian Railways.
