Railways and public transport companies traditionally have been financed by governments. This is currently undergoing a significant change. Currently about 12% of rolling stock investments are privately funded (18% of the projects). This is equal to about EUR 1.7 bn of private capital per year out of total procurement of close to EUR 13 bn.

Our investigation shows a correlation between the degree of liberalization in a country and share of private financing. With further liberalization expected, and government budgets under strain private financing will inevitably grow.We conducted this assessment of private financing together with the Rail Working Group, a not-for-profit industry group focused on the global implementation of the Luxembourg Rail Protocol to the Cape Town Convention (a new world-wide legal framework to recognize and regulate security interests of lenders, lessors and vendors to facilitate private financing of rolling stock).

We analyzed roughly 370 rolling stock projects in the years 2011 to 2013 regarding their financing structure by classifying the purchasing parties in public, private, or public-private partnerships.In the document, we show a detailed breakdown of private financing in rolling stock by country and product segment and also provide an outlook on what we expect the future development will be.