photo: Archives/We know it first: Slovakia is planning subsidies for rail transport. We provide a discount on the railway transport route, announced Secretary of State Kmeť
State Secretary Jaroslav Kmeť confirmed at a meeting with representatives of Chinese carriers that Slovakia will introduce a discount on the railway transport route. This step could greatly help rail transport in Slovakia.
As one of the exclusively invited media, Rail Target participated today in a meeting of representatives of the Slovak Ministry of Transport and Slovak rail carriers with its Chinese counterpart in the intermodal transport translation TKD Dobrá near Čierna nad Tisou. The main theme was the promotion of intermodal transport and the promotion of goods flows from China through Slovakia further to Europe. This route is called the Silk Road. These are huge flows of goods that are transported by rail. These flows flow to Europe via Russia and on through Belarus and Ukraine. At the borders of the European Union, the track gauge is changing from wide-gauge to classic gauge, which is installed in most of Europe. Border states, it is Poland, Hungary and it is Slovakia that competes intensively among themselves for which territory the goods will be transported.
Slovakia, which has so far lost significantly in this race, announced today a major offensive in this rivalry. The main motivation for rerouting the goods flows is the price of transport, projected largely through the price of the rail transport route. The State Secretary of the Ministry of Transport, Jaroslav Kmeť, commented directly on the move. "The Slovak Republic is planning subsidies. We are preparing a state aid scheme precisely for these Chinese trains, by direct subsidy for one container, this state aid scheme is prepared in the intermodal transport strategy that we will soon submit to the government, on the other hand, we want to provide a discount on the railway route, as we are now providing for transport by rail in the Slovak Republic."
In his next answer, the Secretary of State calculated how big the discount specifically should be "Up to 90% is done by container transport, the subsidy for the container is 50-200€, we have agreed with the companies that provide such transport in Slovakia, they are willing to run from their margins and are willing to contribute 50-100€ on their part, yesterday we had a meeting with the Chinese ambassador, the Chinese side is preparing subsidies on its side in order to be competitive with Poland or Hungary. We need to cope, the price will be lower by 200-300€ per container,".
As is clear from the words of the Secretary of State, the subsidy has not yet been definitively approved and there is still a long line of hearings ahead of it. Nevertheless, this binding notification by the Deputy Minister of Transport marks a reversal in Slovakia's railway policy to date, which has not directly introduced this support.