Railways have taken a large number of tariff and non-tariff measures to attract more freight business to rail transport and for increasing the modal share of rail in the overall transport. These include:

1. Setting up of Business Development Units to inter alia actively pursue and attract freight business for rail
2. Withdrawal of 15% busy season surcharge on Railway freight for all commodities except Iron ore and Coal
3. Concession on long lead traffic of 15 to 20% on Coal, lron-ore and iron & steel.
4. Concession on short lead traffic of 10 to 50% for commodities (except Coal and iron-ore)
5. 5% discount on loaded Containers & 25% on empty Containers and waiver of stabling charges on Container rakes during COVID till 31st Oct, 2020.
6. Specific discounts on commodities such as fly ash.
7. Rationalisation of classification of industrial salt.
8. Making existing schemes like traditional empty flow directions, wagon investment schemes, PFT, Siding poIicy simplified and made more customer friendly.
9. Debit/Credit scheme for Demurrage introduced for sidings.
10. Launching of Freight Business Development Portal.

As a result of these efforts, in the current financial year, despite pandemic, Railways have achieved record freight loading in the last 5 months i.e. September, 2020 to January, 2021.

This information was given by the Minister of Railways, Commerce & Industry and Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

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DJN