Kazakhstan plans to restructure railroad system by year 2005

/IRBIS, Dec.21, 00/ - REUTERS informs that government of Kazakhstan approved railroad restructuring program for year 2005. The program consists of two stages and assumes partial privatization and investments. On the first stage (till 2003), government intends to commercialize social structure of the industry. On this stage transportation tariffs would be regulated by the government. The second stage includes setting of competitive environment. There would be 4 companies created for that purpose. Three of them will be private and one, the state company will work over railroad infrastructure. It is assumed that transportation companies could be able to set tariffs freely. The passenger transportation will be incorporated. Currently, about 40% of them are subsidized by freight transportation. The industry now employs 120 th people. After restructuring it could loss 12% of them. To cover the social aspects the government plans grant people $500 fees for voluntary firing from the company. The EBRD loan of $5 mln will be used for this purpose. There are also other social security measure such as reclassification training, employment at the railroad infrastructure, etc. The length of rail roads in Kazakhstan amounts to 13.6 th km. The share of Temir Zholy in Kazakhstan GDP is 5% and budget payments amount to 6% of the state budget.