The private operators in Russia militate for the liberalisation of the railway freight transport market as a solution for improving the situation of the national rolling stock fleet, which is in poor state, but also for the development of the market and of transport services.
The 2030 Strategy on Russia’s railway transport stipulates, apart from the infrastructure development investments and programmes, the increase of the sector’s competitiveness and the establishment of private operators.
At present, RZD carries 1.3 Billion tonnes of freight a year, which is 80% of Russia’s transport market. Even if it is the most important carrier, RZD is confronted with a deficit of freight wagons which significantly affects freight traffic flows and volumes. “The privatisation of 100% of RZD’s freight trains, when new operators Freight One and Freight Two were established, was a mistake. RZD wants to manage around third of the freight cars fleet and to use the cars where necessary”, declared RZD President Vladimir Yakunin. In this context, “private operators are focused on profitable transport, leaving some of the clients without wagons”, pointed out Yakunin.
To improve the situation of the entire market segment, which also include the fleet of vehicles, private operators believe “liberalisation” is the only solution. As part of the railway reform, “traction services should open as the fleet of vehicles (locomotives) is severely falling. At the moment, there are 90 cars for a locomotive, while the average length of a train is of 71 cars. Thus, we are facing a deficit of 20% and we don’t see how the system could handle such a situation any longer”, declared Sergey Maltsev, CEO of Globaltrans group of companies. Therefore, the problem of permitting the access of the private segment to traction services becomes only a question of time. The government strategy on the development of transport in Russia stipulates the development of the transport sector competitiveness and the access of private operators. “The system could not recover without private investments in the fleet of locomotives”, said Maltsev.
In July, Freight One operator said they would put in service two locomotives in the national network, on the line linking the steel plant in Novolipetsk to the Stoilensky mine processing plant, in Belgorod region. Under the strategy, the company plans to buy 8 locomotives to operate in the same region in the next 2 years, but the problem is not the acquisition of rolling stock, but its operation on the RZD network.
The licensing for putting in service a private locomotive in the national network is backed by the public sector and RZD can grant the permission for operation while considering the network capacity. Thus, the liberalisation will eliminate problems on the simplification of procedures and, according to the media, the first private operators could run on the network at the end of the year or the beginning of the next one.
Companies such as Globaltrans, Transgarant and Transoil have rolling stock that could be put in service on the Russian network and this objective could be discussed by the representatives of the companies to Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich.
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