Rail freight volume in China last year declined by a record amount, Beijing-based financial news site caixin.com reported Tuesday, citing data obtained from the national railway administrator.

Rail freight movements fell 10.53 percent year-on-year to 3.4 billion tons, caixin.com noted, citing data from the National Railway Administration. Since China Railway Corp, a spin-off from the now defunct railway ministry, was established in 2012, rail cargo movements have been dropping, media reports said. However, the 2015 volume was roughly the same as that six years earlier, when rail freight data was first published.

Experts on railway transport said they weren't surprised by the decline in rail cargo levels, which used to be considered an important indicator of the country's overall economic growth.

The continuing drop in rail freight volume was mainly due to decreased long-distance shipments of bulk raw materials such as coal and crude oil, said Dong Yan, a research fellow at the Institute of Comprehensive Transportation of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the nation's top planner.

"The decline makes sense, as the country has been shifting the production and consumption pattern of energy products in recent years," Dong told the Global Times Tuesday.

He noted that eastern coastal regions, which used to depend on transporting oil and gas from western regions, now largely import energy products.

"Also, the long-distance transportation of coal has raised concerns over environmental pollution. Therefore, it's discouraged," Dong said.

From January to November, total rail freight volume reached 3.07 billion tons, down about 12.3 percent from a year earlier, according to an announcement from the NDRC on December 28.

Meanwhile, total coal output in this period was 3.37 billion tons, down 3.7 percent on a year-on-year basis, according to another post the NDRC published on the previous day. The total volume of rail bulk cargos carrying coal was 1.82 billion tons, representing a decline of 13.5 percent compared with the same period in 2014.

Rail freight volume will continue to decline in 2016, Zhao Jian, professor with Beijing Jiaotong University, told the Global Times Tuesday.

"Coal and steel represent a large portion of the products transported by rail, and the country will further cut the production of those raw materials due to the problems of overcapacity," he said.

As the nation's economy is moving toward a consumption-driven economy, new indicators such as the employment rate should be taken into account, Zhao said.