Tariff increase by Russian Railways

Tariff increase by Russian Railways

The Russian Railways public corporation Vice President Salman Babayev announced in a briefing last week that they are willing to increase the railways tariff for cargo transportation. The increase is determined to be at a rate of 12-12.5%. The main driver in making such a decision was the increasing amount of cargo transportation to the seaports. During the briefing, Mr. Babayev expressed his belief that the tariff increase they are affecting will not have a significant impact on the products shipped, as the product prices are increasing much faster than the railway tariffs. In any case the increase will lead to only a 1.2% increase on the final product price, which cannot be evaluated as causing defect to the Russian port competitiveness to foreign ports. It is expected that the Russian Railway's proposal to the Federal Tariff Office will take until mid-December, to around December the 15th, to consider the differentiated tariffs indexing.