Continuing with its practice of hiking rates outside the Budget, the Railway Board has announced upward revisions of several charges, namely, demurrage charges, stabling charge and wharfage charges. The revised rates will come into force from February 1.
The demurrage charge will be Rs 100 per eight-wheeled wagon per hour, or part of an hour, for all users. At present there are two slabs ¨C Rs 50 per for steel plants and Rs 75 for others and these rates came into force from December 2006. The proposed revision will hit hard the steel plants whose demurrage bill, even at the present level of detention, will simply double.
The stabling charge has been hiked from the present Rs 200 to Rs 300 per wagon per day or part of a day from the time of arrival to the time of removal. The present stabling charge of Rs 200 per wagon per day came into force from December 2006.
There are three slabs of wharfage charges and all of them have been hiked. Thus the wharfage charge for Group I customers, i.e. those using more than 12 rakes per month, have been raised to Rs 100 per wagon from Rs 60 (up to 24 hours) and Rs 90 (for more than 24 hours).
The wharfage for Group II customers, i.e., those using seven to 12 rakes, has been raised to Rs 75 from Rs 40 and Rs 60 respectively and for Group III customers using less than seven rakes to Rs 50 from Rs 10 and Rs 15 respectively. The present rates came into force from April 2007.
Meanwhile, the iron ore stocks in three of Steel Authority of India Ltd¡¯s plants at Bokaro, Durgapur and IISCO have dropped due to non-availability of required number of rakes for loading iron ore at the mines. As against the requirement of around 16 rakes per day, the availability, it is learnt, is less than 12 rakes.
Inquiries reveal that South Eastern Railway (SER), serving the steel plants, has cut down on rake allotment in view of huge detention of rakes at the plants. Thus, at Bokaro, the existing detention is 25 hours against the free time of 14 hours.
The corresponding figures for Durgapur and IISCO are as follows: For Durgapur 14 hours and 24 hours and for IISCO eight hours and 10 to 30 hours respectively.
SER, it is learnt, has set the targets for detention - 20 hours each for Bokaro and Durgapur and nine hours for IISCO, making it clear that unless the targets are adhered to, the cut down on rake allotment will continue. |
