Public joint-stock company Ukrzaliznytsia has set too low prices of gondola cars during some tenders to buy 3,000 gondola cars announced on January 18, which made impossible the participation of Ukrainian car building plants in it. Prices of Ukrainian plants have grown, taking into account growth of prices of spare parts and energy. This resulted in a failure of the tenders, Head of the supervisory board of Kriukov Car Building Works (KCBW) Volodymyr Prykhodko has said.
“On the basis of ‘deep’ analysis of prices of gondola cars on the national and international markets conducted by Ukrzaliznytsia and its financial plan for 2017, the price ‘increased’ by UAH 40,400. In 2017 prices of large-size car casting grew by over UAH 50,000. What will we do with the increased prices of the rest of Ukrainian materials, parts and energy? What will we do with the obligatory increase of minimum wage to UAH 3,200?” a member of the national committee for industrial development Prykhodko said in a statement posted on the website of the enterprise.
“He said that Ukrzaliznytsia could not be misinformed about the prices of Ukrainian metal and parts for car building. They tried to arrange the issue with metal companies at a meeting at Ukrzaliznytsia on January 27, but failed to do this. Engineers officially proposed to the railway company to study the rules for forming the prices at the manufacturing enterprises, but Ukrzaliznytsia top managers refused to discuss these issues,” Prykhodko said.
Production of the models of gondola cars announced in the tender was started in 1998 with later modernization of the bear knot of the bogie.
Ukrzaliznytsia produces gondola cars that the company planned to buy at its repair plants and launched only 54 wagons in January 2017, he said.
He said that production of old cars was beneficial for Ukrzaliznytsia as losses via economic schemes of the company were compensated and wages were also paid for repair of cars (while Ukrainian car builders cannot afford it).
“It looks like Ukrzaliznytsia artificially pushes national transport engineering companies to the decision not to participate in the tender by setting lower price to make the tender a failure, but due to fault of engineers,” he said.
He said that despite of the instruction of the government to buy innovative cars, Ukrzaliznytsia continued ordering old cars.
He said the Economic Development and Trade Ministry and even the Cabinet of Ministers should help resolve this issue. (Interfax/Business World Magazine)