Polish State Railways to outsource some rolling stock from Deutsche Bahn

Due to insufficient funds for purchase of rolling stock, Polish State Railways (PKP) has announced that beginning in June, 2001, one of the trains serving the Warsaw-Berlin route will be composed of cars belonging to Deutsche Bahn (DB), the German national railway. "Three Polish trains and one German one will travel the Warsaw-Berlin route," said Grzegorz Uklejewski of PKP. This arrangement may cause more problems, since it could deepen PKP's losses in account settlement with DB. In calculating settlements, rail companies use "exchange parity", which means that the national railways pay for the services provided on their territory by a foreign partner. "It can be clearly seen from the new schedule that parity of exchange proves that the Polish carrier is very weak and unable to invest in rolling stock," said Henryk Klimkiewicz, president of Economic Advisory Team (TOR). In the first nine months of this year, passenger service has already brought in zl. 1.865 billion, an increase of zl. 187.6 million compared to last year. (Puls Biznesu,p. 5)