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Ambassador at the Rail India Conference & Expo 2017

Date: 18 May 2017 - 19 May 2017, Venue: New Delhi

Ambassador Milan Hovorka addressed the inaugural session of a two-day Rail India Conference & Expo 2017 held in New Delhi on May 18th and May 19th, 2017. Other members of the inaugural session´s panel were A K Mittal, Chairman of the Indian Railway Board, and Arunendra Kumar, Former Chairman of the Indian Railway Board.

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In his speech, Ambassador Milan Hovorka talked about major reform efforts put by his country to transform railways and make them more efficient and more competitive, while preserving implementation of non-commercial objectives of railways.

He said that this process started at the beginning of the nineties of the past century and was associated with profound social and macroeconomic changes brought about by the end of the centrally planned economy.

The Ambassador went on to say that over a couple of decades since then, railways have undergone significant changes in their organizational structure, operation and third parties´ access to track infrastructure,  and elaborated on various aspects of these changes. He also mentioned that the entire railways network has been or is being modernized and that the new rolling stock, mostly of the Czech Republic origin, has been introduced.

Finally, the Ambassador made a strong case for strengthening bilateral railway partnership between the Czech Republic and India in number of areas, whether it is passenger and freight transportation, decarbonization, rolling stock modernization, infrastructure building or security increase. According to him, the Bonatrans company´s plant for the wheel and axle machining and assembly of complete wheelsets is an excellent example of the Czech Republic Make-in-India commitment in the railway sector.