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·Officials from Railway Board, SCR and Other Zonal Railways also participated in the meeting.

·Representatives from leading Cement Manufactures also participated in the meeting.

A national level meeting of Officials from Indian Railways &representatives from Cement Industry was organised today i.e., o­n Saturday 22nd April 2023 at Hotel ITC Kakatiya. The meeting was organised by Cement Manufacturers association.Shri. Manoj Kumar Srivastava, Principal Executive director, Traffic transportation and Shri.KamleshkumarMishra , Executive director, Business development participated from Railway Board, New Delhi. Shri.Raveen Kumar Reddy, Principal Chief Commercial Manager, Shri. B Nagya, Principal Chief Operations Manager, South Central Railway along with other team of officials from Railway Board, SCR, Western railway and CONCOR also participated in this meeting.

 Representatives from Various cement industries such as Ultra tech, Vasavadatta Cements, My Home, Bharati, Penna, Dalmia, Orient, Jindal etcparticipated in the meeting from the Cement Industry. During the meeting various issues related to the cement sector such as infrastructural requirements for future growth, policy interventions to aid cement transportation and other relevant issues for improving the rail coefficient and logistics were discussed to furrher assist the Cement industry to transport their commodities through railways.

 In this regard, it may be mentioned that, during the last financial year, Indian Railways registered 144 Million Tonnes of Cement & Clinker loading. Similarly, South Central Railways, o­ne of the leading Zones in the transportation of Cement by Railways, achieved 34.499 MTs of cement loading in 2022-23 against 34.108 MTs in 2021-22. Incidentally, the last year’s cement loading of SCR is also the best-ever Originating loading achieved by the Zone in Cement & Clinker.

 Indian Railways, including SCR, have been implementing various Tariff and Non-Tariff measures in the recent past to improve the Cement transportation by Railways. Business Development Units have been formed at both the Zonal and Divisional Levels to not o­nly strengthen existing traffic but also open loading points. In this context, today’s meeting was another significant step to getting the views of the industry to further strengthen cement loading by Railways.TheCement manufacturers Association gave presentations regarding the growth of cement sector, the overall logistics scenario, the volumes expected in the near future due to growth ininstalled capacities of various plants and role of railways as a strategic partner for cement industry among others. Policy support in this regard was also discussed during the meeting. The senior officers from Railway Board and the South Central Railway assured cooperation for the growing cement sector and also outlined various infrastructural projects in the offing and measures taken to help the cement sector.