“Ukrzaliznytsia” uses a tariff collection for freight transportation, which has long been morally outdated, and which provides that the company’s losses from transporting one type of cargo are evenly “spread” over other types of shipments. At the same time, such a scheme destroys the competitiveness of Ukrainian products and contradicts European practice. This was stated by the president of the association of enterprises “Ukrmetalurgprom” Oleksandr Kalenkov, Interfax-Ukraine reports. He recalled that currently “Ukrzaliznytsia” applies a single average tariff that does not take into account the real cost of various types of transportation.
However, route shipments of bulk cargo (ore, coal) move by direct trains without additional operations and use few stations. In contrast, grain transportation involves many stations, including inactive and unprofitable ones, which require the operation of shunting locomotives and sorting stations. But despite the striking difference in costs, the tariff for both models is the same, Kalenkov noted.
“Let’s compare. 18 stations are used for ore transportation, and over 400 for grain, and many of them are inactive, that is, unprofitable. Ore cargoes do not use a single inactive station and the tracks leading to them, a single sorting station, or a single shunting locomotive,” the expert explained.
He emphasized that because of this, a significant part of the railway infrastructure generates losses.
“The price of the issue is huge: 63% of Ukrzaliznytsia’s tracks are unprofitable, and they generate a loss of over 16 billion hryvnias. But currently UZ pretends that the cost of transportation is the same for cargo transported by routes and for those that are sent in one wagon and use a huge part of the inactive-unprofitable infrastructure,” Kalenkov emphasized.
According to him, because of this, Ukrzaliznytsia is forced to maintain excess infrastructure that is unprofitable for certain types of cargo, shifting costs to profitable segments. This creates a double burden: the industry pays for its own transportation and actually subsidizes agricultural and other wagonload shipments.
The head of Ukrmetallurgprom emphasized that such “equalization” of tariffs destroys fair economic logic and jeopardizes exports, so instead of the Soviet system, it is necessary to switch to the European model: it provides for the calculation of the basic cost of each logistics model, and then correction coefficients are applied. Then the tariff for different types of shipments will differ, and in some cases – significantly, because their cost and logistical requirements differ, Kalenkov added.
As reported, Ukrzaliznytsia planned to increase freight tariffs by almost 40% next year. At the same time, the Ministry of Economy opposed it: they stated that before increasing freight rates, Ukrzaliznytsia should update the tariff collection, which has not been revised since 2009. After all, a general increase in tariffs in itself will not allow the company to increase its profits, because part of the cargo will go on the roads or simply disappear due to the shutdown of enterprises, the ministry explained.
