Translated material
Private matter
Transport investors prefer ports over highways
Private investment in Russia's transport infrastructure last year was twice as high as government investment in this area, Deputy Minister of Transport Alexander Misharin told Vremya Novostey yesterday. According to him, the total volume of investments in the infrastructure of railways and roads, air and water ports reached 594 billion rubles in 2006. Of these, 194 billion rubles. accounts for investments from government sources.The remaining 400 billion rubles. private companies invested. According to Mr. Misharin, private owners spent approximately the same amount on purchasing vehicles.
In relative figures, the share of transport investments is growing: in 2006, 13% of the total amount of capital investments in the country was allocated for these purposes; a year earlier, transport accounted for 11% of investments.
As a particularly successful example, the deputy minister cited the seaport sector , where private money flowed earlier and in greater quantities than, say, into the road and railway infrastructure. It was thanks to these means, he said, that the volume of cargo handled by Russian ports last year (421 million tons) exceeded the maximum level reached in the USSR in 1989 (407 million tons). Moreover, this achievement, the deputy minister emphasized, means that the throughput capacity of Russian ports has actually doubled since 1991, since Russia received only half of the Soviet port capacity during the collapse of the USSR.
Mr. Misharin spoke at a press conference dedicated to the International Transport Forum, which will be held in Sochi from May 31 to June 3 with the participation of federal departments, Russian Railways, regional governors, foreign transport administrations and, of course, representatives of private capital . In total, the forum organizers expect, according to them, 2 thousand guests.
Yesterday, Mr. Misharin named two topics that could become central both at the forum and in general in the activities of Russian transport workers in 2007.
This year, Russia has the opportunity to combine trans-European transport corridors with Asian ones through its territory. “So far, all European corridors reach, at best, the Urals,” the deputy minister recalled. The condition of land and waterways leading from Russia to China and Iran does not meet the standards of a “transport corridor.” If they can be brought to the required conditions, then through them there will be access to the highways of South and Southeast Asia with all the ensuing economic benefits. This will become one of the most important areas of the industry’s work in 2007.
Another hot topic for the industry is the development of logistics structures within Russia. Mr. Misharin compared the current state of domestic freight transport with what Russian telecommunications networks looked like ten years ago. At that time, the country already had sufficient telecommunication trunk lines, but the bottleneck remained the so-called “last mile,” i.e. local signal delivery networks to subscribers. “Logistics is the “last mile” of transport,” Mr. Misharin formulated. According to him, in 2007 the formation of large logistics hubs is expected in the Moscow region, Murmansk, Novorossiysk, Yekaterinburg and in the ports of the Russian Far East.