New plan to put PKP on track for profits in 2007

The Ministry's amended program of restructuring PKP envisages fina ncing it from the road construction budget. Grzegorz Mędza, deputy Infra structure Minister responsible for railways, believes the government will accept the document in the beginning of January. "The program states new rules of financing the rail infrastructure... Concluding changes to regu lations and reorganizing the PKP group should take us up to several months," said Mędza. The main source of capital needed to finance PKP will be gas excise taxes and funds gathered from road fees paid by drivers. Currently 30% of the zł.15 billion income from excise taxes is spent on road const ruction and modernization. Of that amount, 12% is managed by the Infrast ructure Ministry. "We proposed raising that rate from 12% to 16% and spe nding a part of that capital on rail infrastructure," added Mędza. These changes will allow PKP to be capitalized with zł.400 million in 2006 and zł.600 million in 2007. (Puls Biznesu, p. 4) D.W.