Transport has stabilized, the same volume of goods was transported by road and rail in March as a year ago

There is a problem of more than 10% year-on-year decrease in goods transported in freight transport in the component- other transport, including water, air, pipeline and warehouse and support activities. The number of passengers in road passenger transport has already exceeded the pre-pandemic March 2019. The railway transport has still not approached the perspective pre-pandemic years before, it still lacks 10% of passengers.

In March 2023, Slovak companies transported 16.7 million tons of goods within freight transport. The volumes of goods transported by road decreased slightly year-on-year, while they increased slightly by rail, in both cases the volumes were similar year-on-year. The total decrease of transported tons by almost 12% was influenced by a dynamic, year-on-year drop by half in other transport. This proportionally less important component has been fundamentally influencing the overall parameters of the transport and storage sector for months. For a long time, road transport represents more than two-thirds of the transported tons of goods.

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The second transport indicator - freight transport performance, which also takes into account transport distances, decreased by 13.4% year-on-year and reached 3.16 billion tonne- kilometers (tkm) in the third month. The slump was influenced by a high two-thirds drop in mileage, especially in non-public freight transport. This is a proportionally smaller part of road transport, which is carried out by non-transport companies, i.e. companies with a core business other than transport.

Passenger transport was affected mainly by public transport

In March 2023, the number of passengers in passenger transport increased by 14.7% year-on-year and reached 60.6 million people. They were approximately identical values as in March 2019, i.e. before the pandemic. The decisive road transport rose dynamically by double digits year-on-year, while its component public transport rose significantly (+18% year-on-year). Similarly, the return of passengers to trains was completed, they increased by 12% year-on-year, but their number still did not reach the value of March 2019.

Passenger transport performance, taking into account the length of the roads, reached 780 million passenger kilometers, they were up to by almost a fifth year-on-year. The number of passenger kilometers travelled increased by 18%.

Transportation and storage for the first three months of 2023

In total, for the first quarter of 2023, 49,3 million tonnes of goods were transported in freight transport, representing a year-on-year decline by 8.9%. 169.7 million passengers were transported by means of passenger transport, with a year-on-year growth by 23%. There was a year-on-year growth by almost a quarter in both rail and road transport.

The data for the first quarter of 2023 has been revised and refined based on the results of the weekly survey in road freight transport.