Indian Railways has agreed to share real time freight information data with Coal India. The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) and Coal India signed a one-year agreement on Monday which will help CIL to tackle the menace of under loading and monitor movement of coal laden rakes.

The public sector miner will now have precise details of loading, weight and unloading and logistics details along with turnaround time of rakes.

Coal India officials said that the information can be used for faster billing, replacing manual entry of railway receipts with instant online transfer. The information on sanctioned coal and rake programmes, rake demand, rake detention and diversion details will also help Coal India subsidiaries to plan their supplies.

“The pact assumes greater significance at a time when CIL is pushing for increased rail evacuation and gradually reducing the road movement of the dry fuel. The real time data helps us in better planning,” said a senior executive of the company.

Up to February 20 of the ongoing fiscal, Coal India’s coal movement through the rail mode from its own sidings, goods sheds and private washeries at 302.51 million tonnes (MTs) accounted for 61 per cent of the total off-take quantity.

When linked with merry-go-round system, at 92.8 MTs, the share expands even higher to 79 per cent and officials said that there is scope of further raising the share.

CIL and CRIS will collaborate for further improvement in data sharing with periodical reviews. The contract period of the memorandum is one year with annual technical support. Coal India has also developed a portal that will help in sharing the Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) data with its subsidiaries. The annual expense of the contract is estimated at Rs 41 lakhs.