The financial crisis continues to affect the economies in the Wider Black Sea Area (WBSA) and will continue to do so at least until the beginning of 2011. This was the conclusion reached by those who attended the session entitled “The impact of the global financial crisis on the railway business environment”, organised during the Railway Summit 2011. The logistics integrators who attended this event presented solutions to surpass the current deadlock. One of the solutions is to increase the use of private terminals or attract small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the retail sector (customers who usually resort to road transport) towards rail transport.
Michael Clausecker, Director General UNIFE, believes that the economic deadlock has generated a phenomenon that managed to change the global economic map, affecting the freight flows. He said that the countries which before the economic crisis had the strongest economies, like the US, Japan or certain countries in Western Europe are recording very low growth rates and have become overwhelmed by their competitors when it comes to industrial production and trade, competitors which are, in fact, emerging economies, like China or India, and which record a stable economic growth.
WBSA countries will record a moderate growth in the railway sector. Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe, rail transport will increase by 2% (from EUR 7.8 Billion to 9 Billion) and in the CIS region, the railway market will increase by 3.2% (from EUR 15.2 Billion to 19 Billion).
The stable growth recorded in South-East Asia will attract logistics freight flows, thus generating economic stability in the countries transited and growth in the destination countries of the freight coming from China or India and a less significant increase in the countries that ship freight to Asia, seeing as China and India record less imports and more exports.
According to CER Executive Director Johannes Ludewig, the crisis in the railway sector will be surpassed if the financial institutions manage to recover. The banking market is far from reaching the level recorded before 2008.
Intermodal terminals should be managed by CFR SA Infrastructură, and not by CFR Marfă
Hoxha Sejdi, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Kosovo Railways (HK), shared some of the experience of his company in limiting the effects of the crisis on the railway system and came up with a solution, which proved to be a success in Kosovo: attracting SMEs in order to compensate for the loss of major customers (Sejdi gave as example the leading nickel manufacturer in Kosovo, who lost 50% of the market because of the crisis).
Amedeo Neculcea, Commercial Director at GFR, raise the issue of free access in the terminals owned by the state. Octavian Udrişte, Consultant at Club Feroviar, believes that the terminals should be managed by CFR SA Infrastructură, and not by CFR Marfă, this model being adopted also in Western Europe.
During the session dedicated to the development of logistics services which include rail transport, David Goldsborough, CEO Delamode România, focused on using the strategic potential of the port of Constanţa and attracting customers from the retail sector. He outlined the role played by private terminals, which can represent an alternative to state-owned terminals. He presented the case of his company, which didn’t wait for the situation of the terminals owned by CFR Marfă and CFR Transauto to become clarified and chose to develop its railway activities using the Comat Electro terminal in Bucharest. Goldsborough said that there have been no signals from the Romanian state based on which the situation will change in the near future and that finding alternatives is an essential condition to surpass the economic deadlock, in the context in which the state might freeze the investment pipeline for the transport infrastructure.
Ralf Charley Schultze, Multimodal Logistics Director at Gefco, presented the project for the logistics centre in Kaluga, Russia and the project for the transport services of motor vehicles and related components between France and Russia. He hopes that that the similar service provided by Gefco will also be extended in Romania. Schultze also said that freight flows are like liquids, which begin to leak whenever they encounter low resistance. He made this comparison in order to highlight the positive impact of the fiscal measures which stimulate freight transport, such as reducing taxes, eliminating bureaucracy etc.
by Alin Lupulescu
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