“Russian Railways” OJSC and FAS signed an agreement to form the Council of freight market

On 29 June 2016, FAS and “Russian Railways” OJSC signed an agreement on joint actions to form the Freight Market Council. The document was signed by the Head of FAS Igor Artemiev and the President of “Russian Railways” OJSC Oleg Belozerov.

The purpose of the agreement is designed to enable joint events to form the Market Council in order to achieve effective cooperation between participants of the railway transportation market, enhance efficiency of infrastructure use, develop favourable conditions for investing in the transport sector and establish a unified position of market participants when devising normative legal acts and other documents concerning railway freight.

“We consider establishing the Council an essential step. This is a platform where all market participants can discuss mid- and long-term prospects, not breaching the Law “On Protection of Competition”, and more accurately plan their needs and opportunities”, said Oleg Belozerov. He pointed out that a joint Working Group will be formed to pursue the agreement.

“Regarding it status, the Council will be a unique body in the railway sector. The membership shall be balanced due to its multi-chamber structure. It will allow us to reach compromise and well-thought decisions”, pointed out Igor Artemiev.

According to the Head of FAS, the Council will be radically different from other platforms that are rather used to lobby the interests of particular groups of market players, for instance, car pool operators or consignees.

As the first priority, the Head of the antimonopoly authority highlighted attracting cargo to railways, particularly, developing and launching an electronic trading site.

“The concept of the e-trading site is agreed upon with “Russian Railways” OJSC. The trading site should become an Internet platform, where business, first of all, small and medium companies, will be able to make on-line orders for cargo transportation via a computer or a smartphone. We agreed that the customers of the Internet platform should not have any personal contacts with the employees of “Russian Railways” and operators. It should radically change business-processes in “Russian Railways”, making the company more customer-focused”, added the Head of FAS.

Another important area for the new Market Council will be discussing a new tariff list.

“Drafting the new tariff list, we are guided by the need to optimize all costs across the transportation chain. Therefore, the new railway price-list will be synchronized with the techniques that determine monopolistic prices with regard to car pool operators and port services”, stated the Head of FAS.