OREANDA-NEWS. On 12 February 2009 was announced, that President of IES-Holding Mikhail Slobodin participated in the Russia Forum 2009 which was held in Moscow on February 4th and 5th. He spoke at the session called "The Power Industry: Life after Partition" at which representatives and heads of large power companies, infrastructural organizations and Deputy Minister for Energy of the Russian Federation - Vyacheslav Sinyugin discussed prospects of power industry development in years to come.

IES-Holding President pointed out in his speech some challenges that power companies face in conditions of the economic crisis. Among the basic ones he noted "decrease of consumption growth up to negative consumption ratio", difficulties with crediting power sales companies.

Despite of all negative factors the economic crisis is "a serious driver for refreshment and improve of management quality" of power companies, Mr. Slobodin said. "Undoubtedly all generating companies that demonstrated solid profitability growth in 2008, have to compensate decrease in consumption by reduction of expenditures in 2009," - he added.

Mr. Slobodin said that IES has started to undertake some measures in this regard. "All measures that we planned to undertake towards cost optimization and structure reorganization within three years we have to implement maximum within a year now" - head of the company emphasized. "The stress is going to be very high this year," - he added.

President of IES also noted in his speech the necessity to introduce adjustments to the Master Plan of Power Facilities Allocation. This is not only due to changes in consumption forecast but also due to importance of energy saving and efficiency issues that shall be outlined in the document. "This potential has not been defined and specified yet, but the consumption psychology has been changed significantly" - Mr. Slobodin said.