CEO: Russian Railways avoids 10–15% slump in cargo traffic in 2020

MOSCOW, Aug 27 (PRIME) -- Russian Railways has avoided the worst expected fall of cargo traffic of 10–15% on the year in 2020, and hopes to restore the levels of previous years gradually closer to the end of September, CEO Oleg Belozyorov told PRIME on Thursday.

“Our initial pessimistic estimates showed that contraction of loading may have reached 10–15% on the previous year’s level during the peak of the global lockdown. But we’ve managed to avoid the most negative scenarios,” Belozyorov said.

Under the company’s baseline scenario, cargo traffic will fall by 5% on the year in 2020, but Deputy CEO Alexei Shilo said in May that the company has scenarios of cargo traffic falling 11–15% this year.

Belozyorov said that the measures that the company took allowed it to curb April–June loading decrease by only 5.2%. The economy usually recovers slowly, and the company expects cargo traffic to recover until the end of September.

In January–July, cargo loading fell by 4.4%.  Coal loading fell most, by 9.2%, but the company significantly raised loading of construction cargoes, export loading of grain, and landing of transit containers, he said.

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