"The county's on the move," runs the official slogan, but it's taken the government more than a year to get to grips with state railway MÁV. Maybe that's because speed restrictions are in force on more than a third of the country's aging tracks.
It's taken almost exactly six months to announce a winner for the tender to provide MÁV with suburban railway rolling stock. Despite the protests of Canadian-German firm Bombardier, Switzerland's Stadler has won the Ft100bn contract to provide 70 suburban electric trains. So we can expect a sudden improvement in services between Budapest and Pusztaszabolcs, Székesfehérvár and Tatabánya. But economics and transport minister János Kóka is not being lavish in his praise - he's seized the opportunity to announce the dismissal of Zoltán Mándoki, MÁV's CEO. His place will be taken by Gyula Gaál, the current Chairman-CEO.
Mándoki, a former Mol executive who had little experience and less interest in the railway sector, will be replaced by another outsider, István Herczinger, Siemens Hungary's COO.
It's clear why Kóka waited until now to make the changes: he needed something spectacular to feature as his contribution to the government's '100 Steps Programme'. Most of what his ministry is doing has been due for years, or is an inevitable result of EU legal harmonisation - he needed something prestigious, something that could be presented as a breakthrough. "Trains should be clean, fast and reliable," Kóka said. And for this to happen, MÁV's financial house must be set in order. Currently, MÁV lives from loan to loan, all backed up by government guarantees called upon from time to time. Saying that this was "no longer sustainable," Kóka promised that the Boross Plan would bring "spectacular changes" over the coming eight years.
For the time being, however, most things look to stay the same. Kóka's Boross Plan is just a wish-list. "The government agrees that the railway quality must be improved," "we should consider what EU funds might be available for the building of the airport line," and "we should consider options for using private capital." The most important point reads: "the government must see the budgetary effects of the strategic tasks." It would seem that the government got such a clear picture that Kóka was unable to point to a single penny of state money that would be available to help put MÁV's house in order.
