The 33rd UIC Asia-Pacific Regional Assembly (APRA) took place on 14 December 2022 via Zoom and was chaired by François Davenne, Director General of UIC. The meeting focused on appointing the Chair and Vice-Chair of the region, as well as discussing the activities and budget for 2022 and 2023.
Around 70 participants from China (CR, CARS, CRDC, CRECC, CRRC- SRI, CRRC-ZIC, NRA, SWJTU, and Tongji University), Kazakhstan (KTZ), India (IR), Japan (JR-East, RTRI), Korea (KORAIL), Malaysia (KTMB), Armenia (SCR), Thailand (SRT), Australia (Sydney Trains, TfNSW), Mongolia (UBTZ) and Vietnam (VNR) attended the 33rd APRA.
The UIC Asia-Pacific Region nominations for 2023-2024: Na Hee-seung, Chairman of KORAIL, to the position of UIC Asia-Pacific Chair, and Warwick Talbot, Deputy Executive Director of Strategy Portfolio & Investment at Sydney Trains, to the position of UIC Asia-Pacific Vice-Chair.
Additionally, the Assembly also approved the China State Railway Group (China), KORAIL (Korea), JR East (Japan), UBTZ (Mongolia), KTZ (Kazakhstan) and Sydney Trains (Australia) being selected for positions on the UIC Executive Board and the Asia-Pacific Management Committee for the next 2 years.
On behalf of Liu Zhenfang, incumbent Chair of the UIC Asia-Pacific Regional Assembly, Li Wenxin, Vice President of CR, welcomed the participants and thanked them for their trust and support during his 2 mandates as UIC APRA Chair. Batyr Kotyrev, Chief Engineer at KTZ, representing Nurlan Sauranbayev, Chairman of KTZ and incumbent UIC Asia-Pacific Regional Assembly Vice-Chair, also expressed his thanks for the APRA members’ cooperation and contributions, naming the successful workshop on future railway telecommunication in the Asia-Pacific Region, held online on 9 November 2022, as an example.
Davenne then thanked all of the APRA members and the Chair and Vice Chair for their commitment and accomplishments over the year. Despite the Ukrainian crisis impacting the Asia-Pacific region’s memberships, projects, leadership and budget in 2022, in the end monetary resources were sufficient for financing activities. He also mentioned key partnerships with ADB, UNESCAP, UNCRD and TRACECA in 2022 with whom regional activities were established, especially as training sessions could finally take place online and in-person again after travel restrictions were lifted.
Vincent Vu, Director of Institutional Relations at UIC, gave a presentation on the status of projects in the year 2021-2022 and announced that, since the last APRA, 6 studies have been published which will be distributed to the members, 4 projects are ongoing, and another 4 projects have been selected to be carried out in 2023.
Vu also thanked Irina Petrunina, UIC CIS countries representative, Tom Sargant, UIC Pacific Representative, and Milko Papazoff, UIC ASEAN Representative, for their reports and for giving considerable support to the APRA region.
Na and Talbot also expressed their thanks and gratitude to the APRA members for their 2023-2024 nominations.
Davenne closed the 33rd UIC Asia-Pacific Regional Assembly by thanking all the members for their attendance and cooperation and invited them to take part in the next UIC Asia-Pacific Regional Assembly which will be held in-person for the first time after the Covid-19 pandemic, in June 2023 in Melbourne, Australia, alongside the Conference on Railway Excellence (CORE) 2023: https://www.core2023.org/.
