Wednesday, 17 Aug 2011
BS reported that Indian Railway earnings will take a hit of about INR 600 crore in the wake of Supreme Court’s decision to suspend mining operations in Bellary.
The railways have already scaled down its budgeted target for 115 million tonnes iron ore loading in 2011-12 by 3.43 million tonnes. The current potential would have to be further scaled down by approximately 10 million tonnes.
A senior ministry official said that the iron ore movement was earlier expected to bring in INR 9,035.31 crore during 2011-12, forming almost 13% of the overall budgeted freight target of INR 68,620 crore.
According to senior officials in the Railway Board, iron ore loading from Bellary declined 30% to around 16 million tonnes in 2010-11 from 23 million tonnes in 2009-10. Iron ore from the region, in fact, constituted 17% of the total iron ore loading in 2009-10 but fell to almost 13% in 2010-11. This year from April to June, only 3.25 million tonnes iron ore was loaded from the area.
Efforts will be made to load all other commodities to compensate for the shortfall, according to senior officials in the Railway Board. The district of Bellary produces about 35 million tonnes of iron ore annually, about 83% of Karnataka’s total annual production of 42 million tonnes.
Owing to ban on iron ore exports from Karnataka in 2010, there has been a loss of INR 1,071.45 crore to the Indian Railways. The earnings from iron ore exports in Karnataka plunged from INR 1,770.59 crore in 2009-10 to INR 699.14 crore in 2010-11.
According to a Comptroller and Auditor General report, “The annual growth rate of loading in the past decade consistently showed an upward trend till 2005-06 after which, there was a decline.”
(sourced BS)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment