Category Archives: Rail/Road

To ensure timely and adequate availability of fertilizers to farmers at affordable prices, Department of Fertilizers has approved the freight rates for the direct road movement of fertilizers up to 500 km from plant/port to block level, as recommended by the Tariff Commission. The decision will ensure availability of urea in remote areas, while keeping the cost under control. It will be one of the major tool to maintain the demand and supply uniformly all over the country up to the block level and will benefit farmers during the peak demand season. Fertilizer companies will not be allowed to do indirect routing of fertilizers which will save subsidy and promote efficient transportation of fertilizers. The district wise normative road freight rates have been computed in scientific manner in line with the policy. Freight for Urea has been always driven by considerations of serving the farming population at large including those in remote and hilly areas. The intention of the government had never been to save subsidy by paying lower than the actual expenditure on freight. Uncertainty of freight subsidy, on the other hand, can disrupt supply and create scarcity amidst plenty. In this, distribution and movement of urea is as important as its manufacture if not more.

The report is based on the joint survey of road freight transportation along 28 key routes in India. The aim of the study is to explore new ways to increase the operational efficiency of freight transport by road. This study, henceforth referred to as the 2014-15 survey, was commissioned by TCI to assess the operational efficiency of freight transportation by road in India. This is a follow-up study of the earlier studies, also commissioned by TCI, in 2008-09 and 2011-12, henceforth referred to as the 2008-09 survey and 2011-12 survey, respectively. The other objective was to make an assessment of the operational efficiency of freight transportation by road, and suggest recommendations. The focus of the 2008- 09 survey was on a detailed analysis of the trucking industry and a comparison of roads and railways in terms of freight transportation. As on March 31, 2013, India’s total road length network was 5.23 million km and road density was 1.59 km/sq km. However, the length of national highways/expressways was a meagre 100,087.08 km, or about 2 per cent of the total road length network, even as they carried 40 per cent of the road traffic. Roads and railways carried about 65 and 30 per cent, respectively, of the country’s total freight volume. The rest carried by waterways and airways. In 2011-12, the contribution of the transport sector to India’s GDP was 6.5 per cent, out of which roads and railways accounted for 4.8 and 1 per cent, respectively. Road freight volumes are expected to increase from 1315 BTKM in 2012-13 to 1553 BTKM in 2014-15. However, development of new roads has not been able to keep pace with increasing freight volumes and …

The road ministry has shortlisted 15 locations with the highest freight movement for the development of multimodal logistics parks worth Rs 32,853 crore. The locations are in the states of Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana. The parks would be spread over a total area of around 4,800 acres and will be built under the first phase of the ministry’s Logistics Efficiency Enhancement Programme (LEEP).