The news about the purchase of freight and passenger carriages for 173 billion tenge from the Unified Accumulative Pension Fund (UAPF) via the national holding company "Baiterek" is gaining new details. It is reported that the purchase of 100 passenger carriages will cost 73.7 billion tenge, and the carriages will be supplied by JSC "Ziksto".
According to the editorial team of "PROTENGE", on 13 February, the company "Ziksto" finalised a deal with LLP "Intersnab" for the supply of carriage kits in three modifications. The value of the deal is "no less than 100 billion tenge".
"This is undoubtedly those very billions from the UAPF. It is unlikely that Ziksto could have obtained the money from anywhere else, as this 'no less than 100 billion tenge' is more than half of Ziksto's entire value. Moreover, the joint-stock company is in debt - by 2023, its accumulated losses exceeded 5.8 billion tenge. And Ziksto is already accustomed to state money, including from the UAPF", the statement reads.
As journalists write, the owner of "Intersnab" is a certain Roman Pavlinger. He heads "the largest railway engineering cluster in the Republic of Kazakhstan". The carriages that his company plans to supply are manufactured at the Tver Carriage Works.
"Until 2022, Ziksto was a partially state-owned enterprise and repeatedly received money from the state. For example, from 2017, 17.5 billion tenge, including from the UAPF, went to Ziksto through the state Industrial Development Fund. In 2019, the Fund even had to take Ziksto to court over undelivered carriages. It ended with a settlement agreement, but the 'supply' of state money continued. Why doesn't JSC Ziksto buy carriage kits directly from the Tver plant? What is the need for the intermediary in the form of LLP Intersnab?" the journalists question.
For context, earlier the Minister of Transport, Marat Karabayev, stated that for the purchase of carriages, instead of 173 billion tenge, 183 billion in pension savings would be taken from the UAPF. However, the National Bank subsequently refuted his words, emphasising that the amount originally announced would remain unchanged.