OREANDA-NEWS. June 03, 2013. Vladimir Yakunin, President of Russian Railways, opened the VIII International Rail Business Forum: 1520 Strategic Partnership, which is being held at Krasnaya Polyana in Sochi.

The Forum is a traditional platform to facilitate discussions among the leaders of the railway business in Europe and Asia and is attended by over one thousand delegates, including politicians from Russia, the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States, major industrialists and senior managers from multinational corporations, financial experts, academics and representatives from civil society.

The Forum's key idea is to promote a coordinated approach to developing the rail industry in the broad gauge 1520mm space in order to ensure its leading position on the global market for freight and passenger transport.

Opening the Forum, Yakunin delivered a message from Russian president Vladimir Putin, which noted that the Forum was gaining a well-deserved reputation as one of the key events in business life and always attracted great interest from major rail, industrial and construction companies and strategic investors from Russia and other countries. Putin's message also underlined that the emphasis should be on introducing modern logistics and management schemes, the large-scale use of advanced technologies, strengthening public-private partnerships and attracting investment to promising programmes.

In his own address to the Forum, Vladimir Yakunin said:
"I am particularly pleased that many of you, including our foreign colleagues and partners, see the Forum as a key opportunity to strengthen business relationships and friendships. This is confirmed by the high level of the participants. We set a lot of store in seeing our friendships becoming stronger."

According to Yakunin, a wide range of top-class experts will allow the Forum to focus on the full range of sensitive aspects of railway transport which are current not only in the 1520 space, but also in Europe.

"It is obvious that we are interested in similar topics," said Yakunin. "Above all, I'm talking about developing the business model for the national carrier, the organisational structure of the rail transportation market and the development of international transport corridors."

According to Yakunin, not a single rail transportation market, especially an integrated one, can exist without a unified and synchronised train management system and an appropriate transport and logistics infrastructure.

"In the forthcoming discussions, we shall draw on the conclusions of a wide range of serious analytical and scientific studies conducted both in Russia and abroad, and try to give objective evaluations regarding the efficiency of a rail carrier with a vertically integrated structure and its impact on the level of competition in the industry," said Vladimir Yakunin.