President Petro Poroshenko and GE Transportation’s President and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Miller have held talks in Kyiv on participation of the American company in modernization of the rolling stock of the Ukrainian Railways public joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia).
"Prospects for participation of the American side in modernization of PJSC Ukrzaliznytsia were discussed during the meeting, particularly its participation in upgrading the Ukrainian company’s fleet of locomotives," the Ukrainian presidential press service said in a statement.
The president is hoping that cooperation with GE Transportation will help to strengthen the transport, transit, and export potential of Ukraine.
According to him, localization of production of General Electric’s locomotives in Ukraine "will be a breakthrough" in bilateral cooperation on modernization of the Ukrainian transport sector.
As reported, in Ukrzaliznytsia announced in August that it expected to take delivery of 270 modernized and new locomotives in the next five years and that it planned to upgrade part of its fleet of tractive rolling stock in cooperation with General Electric.
In early August, Ukrzaliznytsia and GE signed a letter of intent to jointly modernize and build locomotives. The document also provided for servicing of diesel locomotives. It was announced that the first contract for upgrading Ukrzaliznytsia’s locomotive fleet would be concluded in September 2017, but this apparently did not happen.
Ukrzaliznytsia recently tested a TE33А diesel locomotive manufactured by General Electric. In the period from September to December 2016, this diesel locomotive performed 32 trips under a contract between Ukrzaliznytsia and the American company. This locomotive model is produced in Kazakhstan at a plant owned by GE.
