Divisional Railway Manager of India, Guntur, Mohan Raja, and senior officials of SCR, Guntur, flagged the cargo express from Guntur.

The express with 16 parcel vans and carrying capacity of 384 tonnes of chilli, chugged off from New Guntur station, heralding a new era for transportation of agri products from this region, the Hindu reports.Guntur is the hub of exports of chillies and other spices. With an acreage of 75,000 hectares, the district is among the top chilli producing States in the country. Considering the high demand for export of chillies and other spices like turmeric, ginger, onion, cumin seeds to Bangladesh, a proposal has been made for running a Time-Tabled Parcel Cargo Express from Guntur to Benapole in Bangladesh.

General Manager, SCR, Gajanan Mallya, and the Railway Board have very proactively pursued the proposal with the Bangladesh Government and obtained the permission for running parcel cargo into Bangladesh in a very short time. Adviser (Railways), Indian High Commission in Bangladesh, Anita Barik, too has actively piloted the proposal with Bangladesh Railways.

The Guntur district has been an epicenter of production, aggregation and processing of chillies and other spices. The booming cultivation of these products is sustained with an excellent ecosystem of mirchi yard, processing centres and a chain of cold storage facilities with deep export networks.

However, the traders have been finding it difficult to move them by rail since these products are high in volume and low in density.