The Ukrzaliznytsia public railway company plans to abolish discrimination against owners of railcars and peg the tariffs for use of its railcars to market prices.
Ukrzaliznytsia board member Marek Zalesny announced this to the Magistral newspaper, CFTS reports.
"Our price for gondola cars is regulated by the state while private operators operate in line with the situation on the situation. The result is that the cost of maintenance of a gondola car is more than UAH 200 per day while it earns about UAH 100 per day," Zalesny said.
According to him, Ukrzaliznytsia cannot invest in purchase of new railcars in connection with this. Therefore, the company is currently working with the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade to "unfreeze" the price for use of gondola cars. Zalesny believes that this will benefit all market participants.
"Tariffs should be unfrozen and oriented toward the market. This is the practice in the civilized world. As soon as we solve this problem, we will be able to attract investment from various sources," he said.
These investments are intended for substantial upgrade of Ukrzaliznytsia’s rolling stock. Together with USD 100 million in loans from international financial institutions, this will allow purchase of more than 3,000 freight cars. The board of Ukrzaliznytsia is counting on the production facilities of Ukrainian railcar production plants and increase of the volume of repairs.
As reported, Ukrzaliznytsia’s Board Chairman Wojciech Balczun has said that Ukrzaliznytsia intends to automate the system of distribution of freight cars in the coming months in order to eliminate the human factor from the distribution process.
