Steel Authority of India ltd (SAIl) and Indian Railways have entered into a strategic agreement on long Term Tariff Contract (lTTC) on Tuesday, a Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) press release informed.
The agreement was signed in the presence of senior officers of Railways and SAIl in the office of CCM of South Eastern Railway in Kolkata.
The agreement was inked by Kaushik Mukhopadhyay, CCM, SE Railway on behalf of Railways and by Debabrata Maiti, GM (Rail Movement) on behalf of SAIl and is valid for a period of three years.
SAIl is one of the premier customers of Indian Railways, having a rail coefficient of over 95%.
This agreement involves as many as 15 Zones of Indian Railways for loading and unloading terminals, with different commodities applicable to lTTC, viz, Iron & Steel, Pig Iron, Slag, limestone, Dolomite, Manganese Ore etc with a Benchmark Gross Freight Revenue (BGFR) of Rs 3,417.74 crores and with corresponding tonnage of 19.3 MT effective from September 1, 2017. At present, this is the highest lTTC agreement in terms of gross freight revenue of Railways.
SAIl is on the verge of completion of a major modernisation program at its different steel plants and is expected to attain substantial incremental growth.
SAIl expects that infrastructural improvement at loading and unloading areas will reduce the detention and thereby improve the overall turn-around time of railway wagons in the future. As such, lTTC agreement will be mutually beneficial to both the organisations, the press release informed.
