NORTH MACEDONIA: The government has cancelled the previous administration’s opening up of rail infrastructure access to private and foreign freight operators.
Legal changes in December 2023 had opened access to the network. However, in September this year the current government reversed the liberalisation, with Minister of Transport Aleksandar Nikoloski saying the move was necessary to save national train operator ZRSMT from financial collapse.
Industry insiders say several large European operators were planning to enter the freight market to take advance of North Macedonia’s position on the route from Greece to central Europe. Infrastructure manager MŽ Infrastruktura had expected additional income of €1·6m from independent freight operators in its business plan for 2024.
The law now says that private and foreign operators will only be able to provide public passenger and freight services after the accession of North Macedonia to the European Union; the country applied for membership in 2004 and has had candidate status since 2005.
‘With these changes of the law, we are practically saving ZRSMT, which employs a large number of people who have families and need to support them’, said Nikoloski. ‘In the past two months, we have been actively working to ensure that their salaries are paid. Co-ordinated with the European Commission, we agreed to remove North Macedonia’s obligation to liberalise railway traffic, because such move will push the ZRSMT, which is already in a very difficult financial situation, towards complete collapse.’
Former Minister of Transport Blagoj Bochvarski told parliament that opening up the market had been intended to reduce transport costs. ‘We have to think about the Macedonian economy and open the door for better, faster and cheaper transport’, he said.
Kosta Dokuzovski, director of transport and logistics at steel supplier Makstil, told local press that ‘business has been asking for liberalisation for years. I follow the situation in Serbia, where liberalisation took place in 2016 and since then there are number of private operators. The local economy is satisfied, there is a choice, lower prices for transporting goods have been obtained.’
In September ZRSMT took delivery of four electric freight locomotives which it has leased from Serbia’s Srbija Kargo to address a critical shortage of working traction. This is blamed on bureaucratic issues and a lack of maintenance; a Class 442 loco acquired from Croatia was destroyed by fire in May 2023, while the four Class 443 locos supplied by CRRC Zhuzhou are temporarily out of use because replacement wheels have not been delivered from China.
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Publish date : 2024-11-01 02:00:00
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