OREANDA-NEWS. June 14, 2012. Oleg Sienko, CEO of OJSC “RESEARCH AND PRODUCTION CORPORATION “URALVAGONZAVOD”, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Non-profit Partnership “Freight car union” and Andrey Shlenskiy, Deputy CEO for Railway Vehicles of “URALVAGONZAVOD”, attended an offsite meeting that took place in Sochi prior to the International Rail Business Forum "1520 Strategic Partnership". The topic of the meeting was “Car-building industry within interstate relations”. Other Russian leading car-building companies that formed NP “Freight car union” are OJSC “Russian Corporation of Transport Machine-Building”, OJCS “Altaivagon”, Tikhvin Freight Car Building Plant, Novokuznetsk Freight Car Building Plant, OJSC “NII Vagonostroeniya”, OJSC “Transpnevmatika”.

At the meeting top managers of the NP members raised the subjects of heavy railroad car casting quality and railroad car bogies unification. Establishing a self-regulatory organisation for railway vehicles manufacturers was the key topic of the discussion. The SRO will incorporate companies that compete in the market, but within the SRO will work as partners.

Oleg Sienko made an opening speech. “There are many controlling organizations that supervise Russian manufacturers and obligate them to follow regulations. However there are lots of imported railway cars in Russia. Those regulations don’t always apply to them and as a result, problems occur. There is a need to come up with unified rules and regulations for everybody in order to protect the market. We have the means”, he said.

Andrey Shlenskiy considers the SRO to be a good example of such means, as the government will delegate some of its functions to it, such as conducting independent enquiries, certification and granting access to the market.

Some Kazakh and Belarusian companies will enter the SRO as equal partners.

“As required by law, an SRO must incorporate not less than of 25 members – business entities within the same industry. This means that after establishing such an organization, freight car manufacturers will be able to develop regulations for the railway car market in Russia and within Common Economic Space”, said Vasily Varyonov, Vice President, Executive Director of NP “Freight car union”

Moreover, a decision was made to send a letter to the Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation outlining problems of the industry and prospective solutions. The letter will be sent to the Ministry during the Forum in Sochi.