NEW DELHI: The Railways has revised its tariffs for bulk commodities such as coal, iron ore and steel, which could raise costs for power producers and steel and its user industries. The national transporter also removed surge pricing on certain categories for premium trains, making passenger travel cheaper on those trains.The increase in freight rate is 8.75%, which will net the railways at least Rs 3,300 crore as additional freight revenue in the current financial year. There’s no revision in freight rate for cement, petroleum products, foodgrain and urea. A top railway official said that the higher tariff won’t increase the cost of thermal power production as the country’s largest power producer — NTPC — would be provided transportation of coal at earlier rates till FY20. “NTPC had signed an MoU with the railways a couple of weeks ago under which the state-owned power producer would get coal supply at unrevised rates until FY20. NTPC is paying Rs 10,000 crore in advance for the same,” a railway official said. For the current financial year, the railways has set a freight earnings target (budget estimate) of Rs 1.22 lakh crore from transporting 1,216 million tonnes of goods. The total revenue target for FY19 (budget estimate) is about Rs 2 lakh crore.FLEXI FARES Indian Railways has discontinued surge pricing on 15 premium trains, including Shatabdi and Rajdhani which were having passenger occupancy of less than 50%throug hout the year. Railways was earlier charging a maximum of 1.4 times of base fare on these trains. For 32 trains that had occupancy between 50% and 75% throughout the year, railways has discontinued surge pricing for a pre-defined period of three months. Railways is hoping that increased occupancy because of discontinuation of surge pricing would lead to increase in passenger occupancy which would make up for the revenue losses. The flexi fare scheme, or surge pricing, however, will continue for the remaining 101 trains that have occupancy of more than 75%.The CAG had earlier recommended rationalisation of flexi fares to improve occupancy. On September 9, 2016, the railways had introduced flexi fare for premier trains: 44 Rajdhani, 52 Duronto and 46 Shatabdi Express trains.