OREANDA-NEWS. November 19, 2012. The Presidium of the Russian government considered the question "On Projects of the Investment Programme and Financial Plan of Russian Railways for 2013 and the Planning Period for 2014 and 2015", reported the press-centre of RZD.

"We are carrying out the government’s instructions to reduce unit costs by 10% in real terms. I would like to emphasise that we are working constantly to increase our efficiency and savings. We are achieving this by, among other things, making full use of resource-saving technologies and new types of rolling stock. A real reduction in the number of employees is being carried out, which in 2012 enabled us to keep costs below the projected rate of inflation in the country," said the President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin at the meeting of the government presidium. However, Yakunin also stressed that the prices rises in industry were much higher than expected.

Measures implemented by the Company include:
restoring and modernising existing plant and equipment;
introducing new production facilities and equipment;
improving the efficiency of technological processes;
optimising the operational conditions of technological equipment;
reducing non-production losses of fuel and energy resources;
timely maintenance work.

The Company also has a policy of reducing expenditures on the procurement of goods and services by awarding orders and contracts on a competitive basis, optimising the management structure, reducing transportation costs and improving logistics.

Russian Railways’ continued work on cost management enables the Company to ensure that increases in transportation costs are no higher than the rate of inflation. In addition, the Company meets all of its social obligations, while retaining its policy of increasing labour productivity more than the rate of growth in real wages.

The financial plan for Russian Railways during 2013-2015 provides for optimising costs to save a total 127 billion roubles. In 2013 alone, the optimisation programme resulted in savings of 23.9 billion roubles. It is planned to achieve the largest cost reductions, amounting to 9.3 billion roubles, by optimising the cost of materials.