Oleg Belozerov, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Russian Railways, has said that the Long-Term Development Programme of Russian Railways to 2025 (LTDP) includes all the necessary measures to solve the tasks which have been set in the Comprehensive Plan for the Modernisation and Expansion of Main Line Infrastructure.
Belozerov was speaking at the final extended Board meeting of the Ministry Transport of the Russian Federation.
According to the Company head, the approval of the LTDP was one of the most striking results of joint work with the Ministry of Transport last year.
“This is a unique result and a qualitatively new page in the Company’s history,” stressed Belozerov.
Taking into account the tasks facing the Company in the framework of the LTDP, Belozerov focused on the issues around the legal and regulatory framework governing the industry and said that this area was one of the priorities.
He also stressed that practically every legal act which had been adopted had resulted in significant commercial benefits for the Company. For example, the changes to the Tax Code alone in terms of the possibility of deducting VAT from budgetary investments will result in a cumulative impact of 60 billion roubles by 2025.
According to the head of Russian Railways, in 2019 it will be necessary to complete pilot projects to develop information modelling technology for capital construction facilities, the so-called Building Information Modelling (BIM) technologies. Any necessary changes to the legislative framework will have to be made on that basis.
“Such a tool will significantly reduce the investment cycle of infrastructure facilities. To this end, we have prepared proposals for improving the preparatory work,” said Oleg Belozerov.
According to the CEO, it will also be necessary to strengthen the legislation on the right to carry out the preparatory work prior to the issue of a construction permit from the date the contract is concluded for conducting the government expert review.
Belozerov noted that a similar legal approach was applied when implementing projects under the construction programme for the Winter Olympic Games at Sochi in 2014.
The CEO added that the Company had also prepared proposals for the improvement of legislation in the field of transport security and asked the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation to support these initiatives.
(Source: RZD)
