The Railways will issue broad guidelines to liberalise station-to-station (STS) special freight rates policy allowing General Managers of each Zones to offer lower freight rates for additional traffic within each zone.
However, if the incremental traffic includes freight movement across zones, then the traffic has to be decided by the Board.
“The system has been put up electronically, which will ensure that whenever a freight customer starts loading more freight volume than the average freight loading in last 24 months, the customer will start getting discounted freight rates,” Mohd Jamshed, member-Traffic, told
The move will allow Railways to get more customers from competing transport modes in shorter distances, particularly in foodgrain, cement, clinker, dolomite, limestone, steel companies and fly-ash.
The incremental freight will be calculated by using net tonne kilometre (NTKM), which is a productivity parameter using both average lead and tonnage.
Railways expects to load 10 million tonne of additional traffic through this policy, according to official release.
Concession shall be granted up to a maximum of 30 per cent on the incremental traffic over and above the benchmark NTKM, stated a release. Benchmark NTKM is defined as average NTKMs of corresponding periods of previous 24 months.
Concession shall be in the form of percentage discount over the Normal Tariff Rate (NTR). It should be ensured that the concessional freight should not be less than the NTR of Class 100. Concession may be granted for retention of traffic also up to maximum of 15 per cent. In case of container traffic, station to station discount up to maximum of 15 cer cent shall be given to commodities charged at Container Class Rate.