The railway infrastructure, the railcars and locomotives of the state-owned Moldova’s Railways (CFM) are not in the best state and new railcars and locomotives need to be bought as the existing ones would not be accepted in international circuit soon, said the company’s director Oleg Tofilat. He noted that 40% of the country’s railroads are in a critical state, while 60% are in a bad state, IPN reports.

The CFM director said the war in Ukraine hampers the process of rehabilitating the railway infrastructure as rails had been earlier bought from the Mariupol plant that was destroyed as a result of shelling.

“The railway infrastructure and the rolling stock are at the limit of the exploitation cycle. If we do not invest with determination and celerity, we risk remaining without haulage or having closed sections. When there is a war nearby, it is very hard to attract financing and to attract enterprises that would execute works to rehabilitate infrastructure. To perform works, we need rails, gravel, equipment and these were earlier brought from Ukraine, Russia or Belarus. Russia and Belarus were excluded from the logistics chain. Ukraine is at war. The rails were made at Azovstal, in Mariupol. We consider no rails will be made there during the next ten years. The rails are a special article. They are not produced at any metallurgical plant. That’s why for us it is absolutely unclear when we will return to normality,” Oleg Tofilat stated in the program “Reflection Points” on Vocea Basarabiei channel.

He noted that the rolling stock of Moldova’s Railways is also in a poor state, but the uncertainty on the market and the low import-export capacity hamper the purchase of new wagons. Loans need to be raised to buy new railcars, but these must be repaid either the company works or not. Grain wagons can be bought from Poland.

“Since the proclaiming of the Independence, no wagon has been purchased for the Railways. The railcars for passengers were extensively repaired. It’s clear that the railcars are nearing a cutoff point. For a typical wagon, the life is of 22 years and this can be extended one time for 11 years if this is extensively repaired. When the period of 33 years is reached, the railcar is not accepted in international transport. The states can sometimes reach agreements to continue using railcars after this time limit,” said Oleg Tofilat.

He noted that the CFM has 2,500 railcars, but the number of railcars in circulation varies as maintenance works are carried out once in two years.