Ukrainian Railways Set Development Priorities

Ukrainian Railways’ Executive Board shared its development program in course of the meeting with European Business Association.

“Our goal is to modernize the rolling stock and infrastructure, find funds to invest”, Ukrainian Railways Chairman Wojciech Balczun said. “The priorities are safety, continuous financial stability, profitability. We would like to distribute property transparently, we need open procedures. Towards the year-end we will commission a program that will automatically distribute freight cars - without human intervention. We will be improving sourcing procedures, change technical requirements, vision of quality, stock controlling”.

The new railways’ management is to separate several areas for further transformation: Passenger, Freight, Infrastructure, Rolling stock manufacture and service, Back office, Strategy, HR.

In Passenger Ukrainian Railways will change passenger service standards by the year-end. Coach preparation and dispatching will be changed, too. Prospectively, Passenger will be separated into an affiliate.

In Freight the company is to change tariff structures and acquire new cars under the EBRD loan.

In Infrastructure Ukrainian Railways would keep on electrifying key links and restore demolished infrastructure at the country’s East.

HR is to be modernized, too - a new payment structure and new motivations will be introduced. The dialogue with unions is ongoing now.