LATVIAN RAILWAY PUTS RAIL SCRAP UP FOR AUCTION

Latvian Railways (LDz) Company, being on the verge of bankruptcy, made a decision to put 4.3 thousand tons of scrap metal up for auction, having dismantled part of the railway track, including rails no more than 12.5 meters long, fastenings, car retarders, switch elements and wheels. The opening price is € 230 per ton. The company seeks to get out of the crisis associated with the collapse of freight traffic by means of the auction.

The culprit is the policy of the Russian authorities, who decided to carry out a complete reorientation of transit through the Baltic republic. Cargoes from Russia began to be sent for export through Russian port cities. The "aggressor country", as the official Latvian media often call the Russian Federation, did not send a single ton of fossil fuels through the main port cities of Latvia last November.

The ports of Ventspils, Liepaja and Riga were left without revenue, having not received coal from Russia.

The search for new partners, which was carried out by the Latvian officials of the Ministry of Transport and the representatives of LDz, has not yet yielded positive results. The hopes that goods from the Celestial Empire would go through the country, and that Latvia would become part of the new "Silk Road", did not come true. The Baltic minister Talis Linkites calls the rare cargoes from China"advertising", as it is clearly not worth building an anti-crisis strategy on them.

The new strategy, adopted by the management of LDz, presupposes a shift in priorities in favor of sea and road cargo transportation, as well as maintenance of warehouses and terminals. A number of projects, including those for which EU funding has been received, will be frozen. In particular, the company decided not to develop the transport hub in Daugavpils, electrifying the railway.

One of the ways to cut expenses for LDz is the staff reduction.

Having lost a thousand employees, the company in the fall of last made a decision to lay off 1,500 workers more. As a result, the number of personnel decreased by almost a quarter.

The head of LDz, Maris Kleinbergs, intends to reorient the company's work towards the development of a range of services, leaving the railway direction exclusively as a service for escorting goods and helping with customs. Since last May, the company has launched extensive sales of its properties, ranging from real estate, freight cars, and a water tower to diesel locomotives and used vehicles.

The company hopes to get almost € 1 million from the current scrap sale so as not to go bankrupt. Residents of Latvia in social networks have already called such an auction the beginning of the sale of the country under the hammer and a control sweep of the economy for enslaving dependence on the EU and the United States. As for the infrastructure of the railway itself, built in the Soviet years, it may turn out to be just a non-core asset for the Latvian Railways company.