Russian Railways will index freight rates by almost 10%

Russian Railways may index the tariffs for freight rail transportation in 2023 by 9.8%, which will allow receiving an additional almost 190 billion rubles from shippers, about this informed Kommersant, citing sources.

According to one of them, the corresponding proposal was approved by Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov the day before, on September 14th. It is specified that such measures will ensure a record level of the investment program. It is assumed that next year it should amount to 1.23 trillion rubles.

The newspaper clarified that this is due to the need to accelerate the development of the Eastern test site, which implies the development of the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian highways, as well as the Artyshta-Mezhdurechensk-Taishet section). According to another source, the cost of developing this facility relative to the updated investment program for the current year will increase by 118 billion rubles, to 260 billion rubles. Also, investments in the repair and development of the track complex and other infrastructure facilities will increase significantly – up to 319 billion rubles.

Initially, the investment program was supposed to set a record this year, but in May, due to a reduction in planned investments in the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) and the Trans-Siberian Mainline, the investment program was reduced from 1.028 trillion rubles. up to 808 billion rubles.

At the same time, these funds will be disbursed with a low probability, the interlocutor of the publication believes. According to the results of August, the work was completed for 66 billion rubles, after nine months only 78 billion rubles will be disbursed, says Andrey Makarov, Deputy Director General of Russian Railways. It is specified that this amount will be more than was disbursed for the entire last year. According to another source, in the period from 2013 to 2020, the average level of disbursement of funds was 73 billion rubles. per year, which is 3.5 times less than planned for 2023.

It is clarified that this year the tariffs have already been indexed to a record value for recent years: at the beginning of the year they were increased by 7.7%, and from June 1 – by an additional 11%. According to a Kommersant source, the average network tariff of Russian Railways will increase by 23.1% year-on-year at the end of this year, with an annual inflation forecast of 12%, as Russian President Vladimir Putin predicted. At the same time, according to the long-term development program of the company, every year until 2025 the tariff can be indexed by the arithmetic average of the consumer inflation index for four years minus 0.1%.

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