Baltic joint company RB Rail will spend around EUR 17 million on wages this year, according to information compiled by LTV programme “Kas notiek Latvija?”.
Authors of the programme say that since 2017, the last time there was an estimate of Rail Baltica’s costs, the personnel costs of RB Rail have increased more than 8-fold. This year, however, the increase will be lower.
The letter from RB Rail to the Latvian Prime Minister presented by the programme mentioned that in September the remuneration of five board members of RB Rail was between EUR 10,000 and almost EUR 27,000. Management and technical directors were paid EUR 26,865 and EUR 21,865, respectively, whereas the other three board members were paid between EUR 10,131 and EUR 10,404.84.
The company’s annual account for 2023 showed that RB Rail’s personnel costs reached EUR 16.12 million last year. In turn, a statement released in early November said that by reducing the budget for 2024, personnel costs were reduced by about 16% or 3.2 million euros, according to the program.
Thus, if there had not been a reduction in RB Rail’s costs, the company’s personnel costs would have reached EUR 20 million this year, but in total, the personnel would be paid more this year after the reduction than last year, authors of the program concluded.
The programme also reported that last year, the average monthly salary for eight “international level” senior experts and management was EUR 12,088, while the average salary for 19 “senior management” employees was EUR 5,900.
Eleven “international-level experts” had an average salary of EUR 5,350, while 41 “mid-level managers” had an average salary of EUR 4,950. The largest group of employees, 93 employees, are “senior specialists and experts” with an average salary of EUR 3 710. The remaining 36 of more than 200 RB Rail employees were paid an average of EUR 2,400 per month.
RB Rail has a total of 210 employees. 155 of them are employed in Latvia. (BNN)