Derailing PKP
Rail transport companies are to urge President Kwasniewski to veto the law on restructuring the country's railways, according to officials of the Railway Business Forum, an organization of companies from the rail industry.
The move by freight-forwarding companies is a response to continuing frustrations over their lack of access to the network run by Polish State Railways (PKP).
According to the forum's president, Wojciech Paprocki, many freight-forwarding companies have not been allowed to use the country's rail network by PKP since being granted concessions in 1998. Any moves to privatize the railways could result in freight forwarders losing their rights to rail use.
Consequently, cargo company heads are lobbying the president not to ink the new law for PKP's commercialization and privatization when it comes up for his signature in September.
Two years ago, the Transportation Ministry granted 21 companies concessions to use PKP's rails. To date, PKP's management hasn't formally allowed any companies to use its rails, nor has it established prices for such use.
"Setting up fees is such a complicated process, especially during restructuring, that it isn't possible to do it quickly," said PKP spokesman Krzysztof Lancucki.
Cargo companies are also in negotiations with PKP's management over a regulation that will allow them to run their trains on PKP rails. PKP's management accepted the new ruling in February 1999, but rejected it this April, said Cezary Nowakowski, a lawyer for Chem Trans Logistic Holding Polska, one of the firms that received a concession.
"The conditions of allowing access to the railroads have changed," said Roman Hajdrowski, press spokesman for PKP management. He said that a new PKP law was on its way through Parliament. That law was passed by the Senate last week, and will now be sent to the Sejm for final corrections and then to the president for his signature.
The new law would transform PKP from a state-owned company into a commercial entity and divide it into three or more separate firms. It would also regulate how concessions for rail transport companies are issued, and the conditions for setting up a price-list for transport companies wanting to use PKP's rails.
However, companies may lose their licenses if they don't operate on the rails once the law is pushed through, and this is what angers members of the Railway Business Forum, Paprocki said. If the law is passed, companies might lose their concessions, he added.
Delays in restructuring PKP have damaged the company, Paprocki said. "An improper understanding of what's best for PKP, and that's understood as protecting the monopoly of the company, has actually led the company into more trouble during the past few years, (helped) lose its position on the market, and lose jobs for its employees," he said.
The company's total debt at the end of 1999 came to zl. 6.3 billion ($1.47 billion), according to the Transportation Ministry. Two weeks ago, power plants cut off PKP's electricity supply in the Lodzkie, Wielkopolskie and Warminsko-Mazurskie voivodships, as well as in the city of Elblag in northern Poland because of non-payment of bills.
"The basic thing that will give us a chance for a 'railway renaissance' is the opening of the market," Paprocki said.
Companies competing for transport business on Poland's railways would prove that it's possible to profit from the rail industry, and that subsidizing PKP isn't the way out, Paprocki said.
