Russia to Support Manufacturers of Innovative Gondola Cars

Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade revised the program of granting subsidies to innovative freight car customers, the Kommersant reports. Earlier only special cars fell under the program; the Ministry included innovative gondola cars into the list.

The subsidy per an innovative special car is to be 350,000 RUB (~5800 USD); in total of 2.1 B RUB (35 M USD) is to be allocated for this purpose. The subsidy per an innovative gondola car or a conventional special car is to be 250,000 RUB (~4200 USD) with the total of 1.45 B RUB (24.2 M USD) per each type of the rolling stock.

Infoline-Analytica’s General Director Mikhail Burmistrov believes that the revision of the subsidy list will make the state support more flexible. The key recipients of the subsidies would be:

- UniWagon and Uralvagonzavod on hatch gondolas (5,800 cars in total);

- UniWagon, Uralvagonzavod and Altaivagon on solid car-body gondolas (5,800 cars in total);

- UniWagon, Engels Metal Structures Plant, Uralvagonzavod, Novozybkovsky Metal Plant, RM Rail and Altaivagon on special cars (6,000 cars in total).