OREANDA-NEWS. September 15, 2009. Sergey Kogoghin, Director General of KAMAZ Inc., participated in the All-Russian meeting related to the problems of metallurgy industry development in the country. Vladimir Putin, Prime-Minister of the Russian Federation, also took part in this meeting held in Magnitogorsk.

Sergey Kogoghin, as Chairman of the Russian Auto Manufacturers Association (OAR), represented the whole automobile industry of the country, one of the heaviest consumers of metallurgic products, at the meeting of the top managers of the largest Russian metallurgic holdings.

The course and agenda of this meeting resembled those which were at the meeting devoted to auto industry issues which was held in Naberezhnye Chelny last December, also under the aegis of the RF Prime Minister. And the legislative decisions on defence of the domestic market offered to be adopted on the federal level and concrete measures to support metallurgy industry were practically identical: faster value-added tax (VAT) refund by export, measures to defend the domestic market, including antidumping ones, reduction of import duty rates for certain products, etc. Being producers of a kind of final investment output in a commercial production string, automobile plants were the first to feel the consequences of a crisis already in autumn 2008. The crisis has recently hit large monopolists and giants of raw materials. For example, the latter ones for the first time officially supported a slogan “Buy Russian” – an analogue of the American program “Buy American”.

In the course of a discussion which took place during the meeting Sergey Kogoghin suggested considering the crisis finished, because “… the current condition will last for a long time”. In his opinion, it is necessary to stop waiting when the crisis will end and to start developing enterprises on the basis of the real situation.

Vladimir Putin directed everybody toward active and purposeful work in his concluding remarks: “Today you must avail yourself of the situation in order to secure modernization of production and, consequently, the required quality in the near future, to create new work places and to pay taxes in time”.