Russian Railways can raise cargo loading 1.5%/mo in Jan, Feb

MOSCOW, Jan 22 (PRIME) – Cargo loading of Russian Railways grew by 1.4% on the year in the last days of January and is to rise by 1.5% in January, and by at least 1.5% in February, Deputy CEO Alexei Shilo said at a briefing on Tuesday.

Russian Railways earlier forecasted a 0.5% loading growth in January.

Shilo said, “We see a 1.4% additional (loading growth in January). Therefore we expect that we will absolutely have more than 1%. In fact, our goal is to achieve a 1.5% average annual figure. We will try to achieve 1.5%, maybe it will be a bit more. It will depend on unloading in ports.”

He also said that the amount of cargo is close to the pre-crisis level of 2007 and allows the loading to rise by 2%.

Shilo said that Russian Railways is ready to consider returning to reduced tariffs on grain exports for traffic from the regions located far from the seaports if the volume of supplies is guaranteed and grows.

“We used to provide discounts, in fact, a year and a half ago. Based on the volumes that we carried, the discount was firstly 10.3%, later we cut it to 7.1%. There is now no discount but we are ready to consider it, if grain traffic is somehow guaranteed and grows,” Shilo said.

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