Indian Railways (IR) have reported a revenue earning freight traffic of 327.30 million tones (MT) for the quarter ended March 2019, which translates into a growth of 4.6% compared to corresponding previous period. And the revenue earning freight traffic of IR was by 5.3% for the year ended March 2019 to 1223.34 MT.

As Indian Railways being the monopoly of rail operations in the country, the overall originating container traffic figures of IR represent the overall volume of Indian Container train operator. Thus for the quarter ended March 2019, the total volume of container train operators (CTOs)as reflected by the originating container traffic of IR stood higher by 6% to 15.30 MT. But the growth moderated from 15.9% registered in Q2FY19 and 7.2% registered in Q3FY19.

Mid single digit growth in IR's container volume for the quarter was largely due to growth in both EXIM and domestic container volumes. The domestic container volume was up by 5.5%yoy (to 3.08 MT). That of EXIM container volume was up by 5.7%yoy to 12.17 MT.

The container net tonne kilometre (NTKM), a measure of combined increase in goods loading and distance moved by IR for the quarter was up by 3.7%yoy to 13537 million KMs hit by lower lead distance. The average lead distance for the quarter was down by 2.1% to 886 KMs for the quarter thus moderating the growth in NTKM despite mid single digit growth in container volume for the period.