Transported volumes of goods still did not reach last year's level, mainly the performance of railway transport decreased

May´s volumes of goods transported by road and rail were the highest in 2023, but still did not reach the last year's values. The performance of road transport continued to grow mainly due to the higher performance of non-public transport. The number of people in passenger transport was higher by 10%. A record number of people used public transport, transport rose by more than a quarter and exceeded even the pre-pandemic values.

In May 2023, the volume of freight transport reached 19.8 million tons of goods, which represented a year-on-year decrease by 13.2%. In the year-on-year comparison, the volume of transported goods continued to decrease from July 2022. The main component of the industry - road transport, which represented three-quarters of the volume of transported goods - had a significant impact on the overall decrease. Year-on-year, by 8% less goods were transported by road. In the same way, rail transport recorded a year-on-year decrease by 7.1%, a smaller volume of goods was transported year-on-year for the second consecutive month. Other transport, the smallest component, recorded a year-on-year decrease by 13.4%.

Freight transport performance, taking into account transport distances, amounted to 3.4 billion ton kilometers (tkm) in May 2023, thus recording a decrease by 3.1% compared to the corresponding period last year. Despite the year-on-year lower volume of transported goods, road transport recorded performance growth by 0.5% in May. Its performance rose for the second month due to double-digit performance growth in non-public transport, by 13.7% in May. On the other hand, railway transport recorded a year-on-year performance drop by 11%.

In total for the first five months of 2023, the volume of goods in freight transport was lower by 10.4% year-on-year, after taking into account the transport distances, the current performance also decreased by 8.9%.

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Passenger transport was mainly affected by public transport

The significant increase in passenger transport continued in the fifth month as well, the number of passengers increased by 9.5% year-on-year to 60.4 million passengers. Road transport rose by double digits, due to the significantly higher use of public transport. In May, by 28.1% more passengers were transported year-on-year, which represented a record value of more than 37.5 million passengers. On the contrary, the second sub-component other road transport without public transport recorded a double-digit decrease in passengers by 16.3%. Rail transport also recorded higher interest, by 3.8%. Water transport, air transport and warehouse and supporting activities recorded a decrease.

Performance of passenger transport, taking into account the length of the roads, reached 807 million passenger-kilometres in May 2023, compared to last year they were higher by almost 8%. Transport performance continued to grow, it was higher by 12.8% by road and by 3.2% by rail.

In total for the first five months, by 17% more people were transported by passenger transport than a year ago, after taking into account the transport distances, the number of passenger kilometers was almost higher by a quarter.