{"id":830135,"date":"2026-07-27T22:57:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T22:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/830135\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T22:57:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T22:57:30","slug":"russia-brings-forward-rail-tariff-hike-to-support-debt-laden-rzhd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/830135\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia Brings Forward Rail Tariff Hike to Support Debt-Laden RZhD"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia will bring forward a planned increase in railway tariffs to October in a bid to shore up the finances of state railway monopoly Russian Railways (RZhD), which is grappling with mounting debt and weaker profits, the RBC news website reported<\/a> Sunday.<\/p>\n

Instead of raising tariffs in 2027 as previously planned, the government will increase freight rail tariffs by 8.5% and long-distance passenger fares by 9.2% from Oct. 1 this year, according to RBC.<\/p>\n

The tariff increase follows an unscheduled 1% surcharge introduced in March under a transportation “security” levy. The additional revenue was intended to help finance RZhD’s investment program, which the company was forced to cut by one-quarter this year to 713.6 billion rubles ($9.13 billion).<\/p>\n

Freight rail tariffs were previously raised by 10% in 2025, 13.8% in 2024, 6.8% in 2023 and 8% in 2022.<\/p>\n

Following the October increase, cumulative freight tariff growth since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine will reach 56%, RBC reported.<\/p>\n

The increases come as RZhD has faced<\/a> its weakest freight performance in 16 years. Cargo volumes totaled 1.1 billion metric tons last year, their lowest level since 2009, while shipments were up just 0.5%<\/a> in the first five months of this year.<\/p>\n

The company’s net profit fell 22-fold in 2025 to 2.2 billion rubles ($28.2 million) from 50.7 billion rubles ($649.0 million) a year earlier.<\/p>\n

RZhD sharply reduced spending to contain costs. Its 2025 investment program, which covers infrastructure projects as well as purchases of railcars and locomotives, was cut to 890 billion rubles ($11.39 billion) from 1.5 trillion rubles ($19.20 billion) the previous year.<\/p>\n

Even after the cuts, the company borrowed 800 billion rubles ($10.24 billion) in new debt during the year, leaving its total debt close to 4 trillion rubles ($51.20 billion), according to the report.<\/p>\n

Last autumn, RZhD asked the government for 200 billion rubles ($2.56 billion) in emergency funding from the National Wealth Fund, citing high interest rates that had doubled its annual debt servicing costs to 534.1 billion rubles ($6.84 billion).<\/p>\n

The government rejected the request.<\/p>\n

RZhD subsequently moved some employees to part-time work.\u00a0CEO Oleg Belozerov said<\/a>\u00a0the company plans to cut about 15% of its central administrative workforce, or roughly 6,000 jobs, from 2026.<\/p>\n

Belozerov has also said the company plans to reduce spending on fuel and maintenance as part of a broader effort to save 74 billion rubles ($947.2 million).<\/p>\n

Read this article in Russian at The Moscow Times’ Russian service.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia will bring forward a planned increase in railway tariffs to October in a bid to shore up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46,139436],"class_list":["post-830135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-russian-railways"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}