IMPACT OF EXTENDING THE «LIFE CYCLE» OF LOCOMOTIVES ON THE COUNTRY’S GDP AND THE ECONOMY OF THE RAILWAY INDUSTRY

Abstract

The article describes the economic aspect of the causal relationship between theextension of the «life cycle» of locomotives and the growth of the country’s gross domestic product(GDP). It was determined that the main factor inhibiting the development of the railway is the lackof funds, which significantly affects the pace of renewal of the locomotive fleet, which can, in turn,cause the unstable operation of the railway infrastructure. The article examines and substantiates theexpediency of using correlation-regression analysis methods to build an economic-mathematicalmodel that adequately determines the impact of the increased volume of freight transportation on thevalue of the GDP of purchasing power parity (PPP) due to the extension of the «life cycle» of freightlocomotives (macroeconomic aspect). We determined the dependence of the value of Ukrainian GDPof the PKS on the volume of freight transportation by domestic wheeled transport. It was establishedthat in the situation under research more than 45 % of the total variability of the value of UkrainianGDP of the PKS is explained by the change in the total volume of cargo transportation by rail androad transport. The economic interpretation of the model parameters allows us to state that anincrease in the volume of freight transportation by 1 unit of cargo leads to an increase in the valueof the GDP of the PKS of Ukraine by an average of $ 0.0674. The use of the model suggested in theresearch made it possible to evaluate a prospective growth of the GDP of the PKS of Ukraine due tothe increase in the volume of freight transportation by fifty locomotives. The extension of their servicelife by five years resulted in the amount of 8,893.7 thousand in US dollars, i.e. $ 1778.3 thousandannually. The study of the economic attractiveness of the development and implementation of thedomestic system for monitoring the technical condition of locomotives (industry-economic aspect) forthe railway industry led to drawing a reasonable conclusion about the possibility of obtaining a significant increase in the efficiency of the railway. It was established that the development andimplementation of domestic systems on fifty locomotives compared to the purchase of foreign-madeanalogues provides savings of more than 32.6 thousand US dollars.