Rail infrastructure and rail freight and passenger transport services should be separated so that as many operators as possible appear on the market, the acting head of Moldova’s Railways (CFM) Sergei Tomșa stated in a public debate hosted by IPN News Agency. According to him, the new Railway Code provides for the liberalization of the railway market and the restructuring of CFM.
The official noted that the entity has very good cooperation relations with Romania and Ukraine and with both states has cooperation projects to develop railway transport and modernize infrastructure.
“We established proper cooperation with the counterparts from Romania and those from Ukraine. We have bilateral passenger and freight transport agreements. We developed the technologies for working on the border with Romania. We have two passenger trains running on the territory of Romania. These are Chisinau-Bucharest and Chisinau-Iasi. Of course, Romania is several steps ahead of us in terms of infrastructure. They have very large projects. And we are just at the beginning. We have old relations with Ukraine. We have the same gauge, the same agreements. We have joint controls at two railway crossings, Kuchurgan and Basarabeasca. We go non-stop from Kuchurgan to Giurgiulesti,” said the acting general director of the state-owned enterprise “Moldova’s Railways”.
The CFM chief noted that the implementation of the provisions of the new Railway Code will contribute to improving the situation of rail transport. CFM’s monopoly on the railway market is about to disappear and the investments of new operators, both in passenger and freight transport services, will be encouraged.
“The new Railway Code came into force in February this year. Through the Railway Code, six European directives that clearly stipulate how rail transport must be reorganized were transposed. The state-owned enterprise “Moldova’s Railways” itself must be reorganized. The code stipulates two main aspects. The first aspect is the liberalization of the market so that there is no monopoly on the market, as it is now, and not only CFM, but more passenger and freight transport operators work. In order to liberalize the market, the enterprise itself must be reorganized. It goes to operational division. Infrastructure must be separated from freight transport and passenger transport. The Railway Code also provides for the creation of the Railway Agency, which is the railway transport regulatory entity. The Agency was already created by a Government decision. The normative documents for its functioning are now being drafted,” explained Sergei Tomșa.
He also said that thanks to the foreign partners’ support, the state-owned enterprise “Moldova’s Railways” undergoes restructuring. The citizens ask for rail transport services, but CFM does not have enough funds to purchase new passenger cars.
“Apart from the Railway Code, we have the concept of restructuring the Railways, which includes the action plan for the restructuring of the Railways. We are implementing this plan. But it is not a short-term action. It requires time, financial sources, specialists in the field, which unfortunately we do not have. But with the foreign partners’ support, we are going according to plan. The Chisinau-Socola train is in high demand, but it is not enough. If we had cars, we could put additional cars on the route to Socola. The Chisinau-Bucharest train runs with only four railcars due to the lack of passenger cars,” said Sergei Tomșa
The public debate entitled “Transport in the Republic of Moldova, Romania and Ukraine: interconnection and European integration” was the sixteenth edition of the project “Double integration through cooperation and information. Continuity”, funded by the Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova. The content of the debate does not represent the official position of the Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova.
