RUSSIAN COMPANY REPAIRING ARMENIAN TRAINS IN TBILISI

The Messenger
Dec 6 2008
Georgia

The owner of Armenian Railways, South Caucasus Railways, which is
itself a daughter company of Russian Railways, is repairing its trains
in the Tbilisi railway yard. The pro-Government Armenian newspaper
Aiots Ashkhar has made a huge scandal out of this. The newspaper has
accused the Russian company of wasting investment funds on buying cars
and apartments in Yerevan and paying an inordinately large amount of
money for the repair of the trains. The director of the South Caucasus
Railways, Aleksander Kuznetsov, denied these allegations at a press
conference on December 2.

Aiots Ashkhar claimed that the real cost of the repair works was
supposed to be USD 200,000, but South Caucasus Railways is repairing
the trains at a cost of USD 1.8 million. In response to this, Kuznetsov
noted that the cost of new trains ranges from USD 4 million to USD
6 million, and the cost of individual carriages from USD 80,000 to
USD 120,000. "In fact repairing a train costs 1/3 of the price of a
new one. I think we benefit, because most of the 42 trains owned by
Armenian Railways are not functioning," Kuznetsov noted.

Kuznetsov said that the body of each train and then its remaining
parts have been sent for repair. The repaired trains are guaranteed
to last for 35 years.