The Hindu Business Line : Wagon acquisition plan as per schedule: Concor

The Railways has decided to hike haulage rates for containers. The Managing Director of Container Corporation of India, Mr Rakesh Mehrotra, says that they have not received the official circular from the Ministry as yet as to how much increase there will be this time.

Speaking on the hike in April, he says that the average increase in April was around 30 per cent and they have passed on around 23-24 per cent. He further states that their wagon acquisition plan is going very much as per schedule.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview with Mr Mehrotra:

Have you received a formal notification as to how much of an increase there will be this time around and what is the increase you are looking at imposing?

In fact, we have not received the official circular from the Ministry as yet. We have also read the newspaper report. But we are waiting for the official communication and once we get that, then we will examine as to what are the haulage rate hikes, which the Railways have imposed.

Then we will do our own detailed analysis and exercise as to how we adjust the rate, where do we need to increase it, where we can absorb a part, where we need to keep the rate same and that will be a very detailed exercise, which we will go through once we receive the official communication.

Whatever scenario that would build up, what will be the impact on the margins? Will it be on and average basis 28-32 per cent, which is right now, or would you see some sort of pressure coming in there in case you cannot transfer the cost to the prices?

At the moment, I won't be able to answer this question unless we have done a detailed analysis.

Give us an idea of the hike that you had in April? How much of that did Container Corporation have to absorb and how much were you able to pass on?

The average increase in April was around 30 per cent and we passed on around 23-24 per cent.

One quick question on addition of wagons this quarter, it was supposed to be around 500, would you be meeting that figure?

This year in the first six months we have already inducted 12 rakes. In the last whole year, we had inducted 11 rakes. As a result, today we have no dearth of wagons for meeting the growth requirements, both for exim and the domestic segment.

So our wagon acquisition plan is going very much as per schedule and we are getting our rakes at the rate of two rakes per month.

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