Railways to Prioritize Iron and Steel Transport as per Iron Ore Policy 2021

Ministry of Railways, Government of India has framed a new policy ‘Iron Ore Policy 2021’ governing the allocation of rakes (entire train sets) and transportation for providing total logistics support to steel industry. According to this new policy, higher priority will be given to the movement of iron ore traffic for domestic manufacturing activity. Within the domestic movement of iron-ore traffic, priority preference will be given to customer who own steel, pig iron, sponge iron, pellet or sinter plants and have their own private sidings at both the loading as well as unloading ends.

For Indian Railways Iron ore is the second most important stream of traffic. Iron-ore along with steel accounts for nearly 17% (53.81 MT of steel and 153.35 MT of iron ore) of total 1,210 million ton freight carriage of railways in 2019-20.