Russia may refuse from purchases of Lastochka trains
Published: Thu, 2014-12-04 14:00The Russian government plans to consider the necessity of purchases of Lastochka trains, produced by German Siemens and Russian Sinara Group, as part of the existed contract between RZD and Siemens, according to Arkady Dvorkovich, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister.
The reason of this is a shortage of funds, which is currently observed in Russian RZD.
In 2011 Russian RZD signed a contract with Siemens for the supply of 1,200 Lastochka rail cars (240 trains) for 2.1 billion euros. According to the company’s plans, total number of Lastochka rail cars in the RZD’s fleet should increase from the current 270 (54 trains) to 1470 (294 trains) by 2020.
The first train under this contract should be supplied to RZD in the spring of 2015.
According to an official spokerperson of Arkady Dvorkovich, in the case of delivery of 1200 Lastochka cars losses will vary in the range from 6 billion to 14 billion rubles per year. For the 15 years the losses of RZD could reach 550 billion rubles, while in the case of termination of the contract they can be only 50 billion rubles for 15 years.
At the same time, according to an official representative of RZD, the company currently has no plans to refuse from Lastochka purchases, considering the possibility of reducing the cost of maintenance of trains, the increase the runlife of trains and the increase of localization of production from the current 63% to 80% by 2017.