The Railways have
adopted new marketing strategies to win back traffic to improve
its share of freight traffic. Accordingly, marketing for non-bulk,
non-block rake and high value traffic has been taken up. Besides,
flexibility in the rating by way of innovative variations to
the schemes for station to station and volume discounts has
been introduced. The other measures includes facilitating private
participation in creation of warehousing at existing railway
terminals and involve formulating schemes for terminal service
providers at railway goods sheds.
During the last
decade since 1991-92, there has been increase as well as fall
in the percentage of traffic for seven major commodities constituting
core sector carried by railways. Accordingly, the traffic of
coal in terms of percentage of traffic transported by railways
has gone up from 63.9 per cent in 1991-92 to 67.67 per cent
in 2001-2002. Similarly, the percentage of traffic of iron ore
improved from 66.1 per cent to 72.93 per cent for the same period.
As for fertilizers, the percentage of traffic increased from
66.6 per cent in 1991-92 to 74.17 per cent in 2001-2002. However,
the Railways recorded decline of traffic in cement, food grains,
petroleum products and iron and steel during the corresponding
period. The decline in cement was from 57.0 per cent in 1991-92
to 43.10 per cent in 2001-2002. The fall in Petroleum, Oil and
Lubricant (POL) was from 52.9 per cent in 1991-92 to 37.49 per
cent in 2001-02. The traffic of iron and steel recorded a decline
from 79.9 per cent in 1991-92 to 34.44 per cent in 2001-2002.
The decline in
the railways’share of traffic of cement, POL foodgrain and iron
and steel has been largely on account of Railways competitive
weakness in the face of challenges from other modes of transport
like road, pipeline and coastal shipping. Besides, the change
in the profile of the economy contributed largely to the decline
in the railways’ share of transport market.
