A couple of days ago, CSR Ziyang Company received letter of acceptance from Ministry of Railway Communication of Turkmenistan saying that it had won a contract worth 580M RMB.
This is the second time for the company to win contract in this country this year since it signed a contract of supplying the third batch of 75 locomotives this April. Up to date, CSR Ziyang has exported 4 batches of locomotives, totaling 239, and created a new record of exporting made-in- China locomotives.
On Aug.6, Turkmenistan organo Altyn asyr published an article to advertise the role of Chinese locomotives in the development of Turkmenistan. The article stated that in order to accomplish the tasks faced by the national railway transportation in the great era of reform and strengthen its foundation in the sense of technology and material and organize the transportation with a clear organization flow chart, the president has signed executive order to allow the combo of Turkmenistan Ministry of Railway Communication, China Mechanical Import & Export Group Co. Ltd. and CSR Ziyang to sign a contract and purchase 20 freight locomotives and 40 shunting locomotives and spare parts.
Up to date, CSR has supplied three types of locomotives including freight, passenger and shunting locomotives, which have undertaken 70% of the cargo transportation and all passenger transportation in this country. Since the railway system was built up during the Soviet Union period and thus suffers from many problems including big gap between the rail and sleeper, unevenness of the line and low pass rate of locomotives, which are ordeals for the locomotives. However, the locomotives made and supplied by CSR have operated over 1million kilometers without any major or minor service. Consequently, the mainstream media in Turkmenistan speak highly of the superior quality of Chinese locomotives. The president even designed a special propaganda wall picture with the locomotive as the background and put up them in the public places in the capital. In 2011, when reporting the achievement in railway construction in the past 20 years, the Turkmenistan official pictorial mentioned specially the new type of locomotive developed by CSR, accompanied by a full page of locomotive’s picture and two small size images.