On March 12^th, 2010 in St.-Petersburg the next meeting of Association of the river fleet enterprises «RECHPROM» (the president of the Association - Mr. Alexandr Goncharov) took place. As a rule such meetings are held on the site of one of the enterprises - members of the Association. However this time the host party was the member of another allied professional association - Associations of ship-repair plants of Russia - Kanonersky Shiprepairing Yard, JSC. The director of Kanonersky Shiprepairing Yard, JSC who is at the same time the president of this Association - Mr. Nikolay Vikhrov not only hosted the meeting of «RECHPROM» but also took part in its work. 

The representative of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation (Commission for National Maritime Policy) Mr. Karlashov V., the editor-in-chief of the well-known resource (electronic and printed) «Korabel.ru» Mr. Ivakin N. were among others participants.  

The representatives of more than 40 enterprises, members of Association, took part in the work of the Association meeting: shipbuilding and ship repair yards, research and design bureaus, equipment and materials manufacturers and suppliers. The agenda of the meeting included: summing up the results of Association Management activities in 2009; approvement of the Association Activity Plan for 2010, discussion of the outstanding issues affecting interests practically of all enterprises - members of the Association as well as ways and solutions to deal with them. 

The speech of Director General of Nevsky Shipyard at the meeting attracted the most interest. Nevsky Shipyard is not only one of founders of the Association "RECHPROM " (Association has been working for 10 years so far) but also its active member. Therefore the speech of Mr. Vladimir Bazhenov was paid such a great attention to. At the beginning of his speech, Mr. Vladimir Bazhenov made a brief review of the state of the affairs at the Shipyard, the current orders status, plans for the nearest future and modernization of the Shipyard. The issues of the next part of his speech, as it was found out in the subsequent discussion, in this or that way affected all enterprises. 

First of all, it is the lack of professional qualified workers. And as a result, shipyards are compelled to hire workers - migrants. Here the enterprises have to deal with imperfections within the Migration Legislation and slowness of the bodies of migration service, besides all this prevents people from getting down to work for long time. The second issue is engineering staff training. The level of education is very low, unwillingness to work in industry.

One more outstanding issue which came to light very recently: «Turbine Blades' Plant», a part of «Power Machines Company», announced that since June 1^st of this year the plant stops the bulb profile production. This is the only enterprise in Russia producing the profile of such kind.  So bulb profile can be delivered now only from abroad. It is a serious problem for all shipbuilders and it should be settled at the state level. Especially considering the attention which is given today to the development of shipbuilding industry.

The participants of the meeting asked the President of the Association to send a letter regarding this major problem to the Federation Council.

The participants of the meeting also discussed the following matters: the draft law «About complex measures of state support for Russian shipbuilding and shipping and amendment in separate acts of the Russian Federation» developed by the Ministry of Transport. The meeting approved the complex of the direct regulations offered by the draft law the aim of which is providing competitive economic conditions of activity of the enterprises of domestic shipbuilding equal in comparison with foreign shipyards. The participants took a resolution to take an active part in finalizing of the draft law, to develop and offer complements to it protecting interests of the enterprises - members of the Association "RECHPROM".