BHUBANESWAR: The East Coast Railway (ECoR) has emerged as the largest freight loading zone of Indian Railways in financial year 2015-16.
Registering a record performance, the ECoR loaded 173.49 million tonnes of freight during the year compared to 161.91 million tonnes in the corresponding period of last year. The jump of 11.54 million tonnes is a 7.1 per cent growth.
Similarly, the zone earned `15,978.2 crore during the last fiscal which is 14.13 per cent more than the corresponding period of previous financial year.
The ECoR recorded loading of 131.2 rakes per day from its jurisdiction as against 122.4 rakes in 2014-15 fiscal. These included coal, iron ore, cement, foodgrains, POL and other commodities.
In coal loading, the ECoR carried on an average 79.4 rakes per day from its area of jurisdiction as against 72.7 rakes per day in previous financial year. The loading from Talcher alone was 40.8 rakes per day followed by 8.7 rakes at Visakhapatnam Port, 7.7 rakes at Gangavaram Port, 11.7 rakes at Paradip Port and 9.5 rakes at Dhamra Port.
Similarly, the zone loaded 14 iron ore rakes per day. On an average, 5.2 rakes per day were loaded from iron ore belts under Khurda Road Division and 8.8 rakes from Kottavalasa-Kirandul (KK) line under Waltair Division. This happened due to frequent blockades by Maoists in the KK line and reduced demand from export markets.