The supervisory board of Estonia’s state-owned railway company Eesti Raudtee decided to stop following the investment plan due to insufficient state funding. The company had requested EUR 23 million annually, but the government decided to allocate only EUR 9 million in the budget strategy. Therefore, Eesti Raudtee will make only urgent investments this year and other works have been halted.
The supervisory board hopes that the government will soon return to discuss a long-term railway funding plan. In order to carry out necessary maintenance and renovation works and to preserve the quality of domestic railways, Eesti Raudtee needs at least EUR 14 million a year in 2018-2021. For this sum it would be possible to continue offering reliable railway service and assure that the traffic speed of passenger trains will remain at 120 kilometers per hour.
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