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Mayor: Almaty subway not to become self-sufficient soon

Business Materials 1 November 2013 16:42 (UTC +04:00)

Kazakhstan, Astana, November 1/ Trend, D. Mukhtarov /

The Almaty subway will not become self-sufficient soon, Almaty Mayor Akhmetzhan Yesimov said.

"The Almaty subway is currently subsidized by the national budget. The subway will be subsidized by the local budget from the next year with 2.5 billion tenge. But with the increased passenger flow, the sum of subsidies will decrease year by year," Akhmetzhan said on Friday within the briefing at the Central Communications Service under the President of Kazakhstan.

According to him, around 40 countries have subways and not all of them bring in profit.

"We attentively studied this issue. There is no a profitable subway practically, as the subway itself is a very complicated technical underground facility where everything must be tended to and there is a high seismicity," the mayor said.

Currently the Almaty subway has two stations: "Moscow" and "Sayran".which link the city center with settlements, Yesimov said.

The cost of transport in Almaty subway exceeds income by over nine times. According to data of the "Information and Cost Center" JSC, revenues amounted to 503 million tenge (($1-154.3 tenge) in 2012.

According to the financial report, the cost of transportation exceeds income by 9.4 times or by almost 4.7 billion tenge. As a result, the gross loss was 4.2 billion tenge.

Almaty is Kazakhstan's largest mega city and is in the south of the country. It is home to more than one and a half million people.

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