Russian Railways sees cargo loading up 2% in September, 3% in 2018

MOSCOW, Aug 10 (PRIME) -- Russian Railways expects its cargo loading to rise 2% per month starting from September and rise 3% in 2018, Director for Commercial Activities Alexei Shilo told reporters on Friday.

The company’s cargo loading in July rose only 1%, and it expects August growth to reach 2%.

“The reason is the same as why we cut the July plan. We will start to increase it gradually from September. Our maintenance and passenger transportation schedules are at their peak now,” Shilo said, adding that the company plans to raise railway repairs by almost 30% on the year to 700 kilometers in August.

Russian Railways is ready to use a 10-year discount on transportation of grain for exports. “We are now in a process of coordination of provision of this discount…We have coordinated the approach in general. If the Agriculture Ministry and the producer together consolidate their volumes and raise grain transportation through railroads, then we are obviously ready to provide discounts,” he said.

Previously, Russian Railways provided a 7.1% discount on export transportation of grain from some regions until the end of 2018. Shilo said that the discount raised grain loading by 48% on the year in January–July and in the first several days of August. This year, the railway monopoly plans to transport 33 million tonnes of agricultural cargoes, but it expects traffic to rise to 42 million tonnes a year before 2025.

He said that export transportation of coal through railways rose faster than the company had expected. Traffic gained 4.9% to 216.1 million tonnes in January–July, and 10.2% on the year in the first 10 days of August.

He also said that the company transported 300,000 tonnes of oil products from Belarus in 2018 since introduction of a discount on their transportation, an improvement from zero traffic before, but still not enough even though the company introduced a maximum possible discount.

He also said that Russian Railways were working with the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange to provide transportation of oil products sold at the exchange.

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