The final meeting of the representatives of the Parties to the Agreement on the “Rules for Accounting International Passenger and Freight Railway Traffic” was held in accordance with the Work Plan of the OSJD Permanent Working Group on Finance and Accounting (PWGF) for 2021 in the format of a video conference.

The meeting was attended by the representatives of 17 Parties to the Agreement on the Rules for Accounting from: AZD CJSC, BC, MAV Co., Rail Cargo Hungária CJSC (RCH, an OSJD affiliated enterprise), GR, “KTZ NC” JSC (KZH), KZD, ZC, “KTZ NC” SE (KRG), LDZ Cargo LLC, LTG, CFM, UBZD JSC, PKP JSC, RZD OJSC, UTI, “Ukrzaliznytsia” JSC (UZ), as well as the OSJD Committee (62 participants in total).

As part of the meeting agenda, the following issues were considered:

- information on the decisions taken at CGD meeting XXXVI;

- progress of mutual accounting payments and repayment of debts (as of 31 July 2021);

- discussion of the status of debts, unsettled issues and information on the measures taken to pay off and settle them;

- consideration of proposals of the Parties to the Agreement concerning supplementing and changing the Agreement and the Rules for Accounting;

- preparation of the draft PWGF Work Plan for 2022 and Work Programme for 2023 and subsequent years, and others.

Basing on the data received as of 31 July 2021, the total amount of debts of the railways of the OSJD member countries increased by 1.06% as compared to the data as of 31 January 2021, and the total amount of debts of the Parties to the Agreement increased by 0.08% as compared to the data as of 31 January 2021.

The Parties to the Agreement have provided their comments and remarks on the debts issues.

The PWGF noted the need to take measures aimed at paying off debts by railways which still had them, and ensuring the Parties to the Agreement on the Rules for Accounting to timely pay for the services rendered.

It should be noted that part of the debts of some railway companies arose due to the imposed international sanctions and problems with correspondent banks in payments to some railways.

During the discussion of the debt status, the Parties to the Agreement provided information on unsolved financial issues and disputes.

The PWGF has notes the presence of a large number of unresolved issues between the railway companies, which have not been resolved bilaterally for a long time. In this regard, the PRGF draw attention to the fact that in 2009, the OSJD established a Commission for the settlement of mutual debts between the Parties to the Agreement on the Rules for Accounting (CMAS – Commission for Mutual Accounting Settlement), which is an additional tool for resolving controversial issues that cannot be settled bilaterally.

The meeting participants discussed the proposals for amending and updating the Rules for Accounting, agreed upon at the PWGF experts meeting (29 June – 1 July 2021), as well as the proposals sent to the OSJD Committee by the Parties to the Agreement. The proposals are aimed at bringing the Rules into compliance with the PGW Agreement, at improving the technology for drawing up and sending accounting documents, at reducing the time for accounting and payments, at a gradual transition to paperless technology and to electronic document management.

The meeting participants discussed 7 groups of proposals. During the discussion, the meeting:

- accepted 5 of the proposed groups of changes,

- decided to keep the current version of clause 2.9 of the Rules for Accounting on one issue,

- on one issue, made a decision to include this issue into the PWGF Work Plan for 2022, taking into account the proposals of BC and UZ to reduce the time for compiling and sending accounting documents, accounting statements and balance sheets.

The meeting participants agreed on the draft PWGF Work Plan for 2022 and the draft Work Programme for 2023 and subsequent years, as well as discussed the procedure for publishing documents related to financial and accounting issues (Agreement on the Rules for Accounting and annexes thereto, Leaflet on the OSJD Specialised Accounting Body, OSJD Information Handbook on Financial and Accounting Issues), on the official OSJD Website.