Road construction functions will be transferred to a new state-owned company

This year a new open joint-stock company, Rosavtorogi, will appear in Russia. State functions for the construction and operation of roads will be transferred to it. But how the state intends to control the expenditure of budget funds allocated for the activities of the JSC remains unclear.

The state “is coping very poorly with road construction,” First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said at the V Economic Forum in Krasnoyarsk on Friday. His solution is to create a new company, the main function of which should be the coordination of the construction and operation of roads. The new JSC will perform the functions of a state customer, receive budget funds annually, attract long-term money on the market, implement large investment projects, but will not engage in independent economic activities.

Transport Minister Igor Levitin supported the initiative: “It’s a good proposal. It should be implemented this year.” And the head of Rosavtodor, Oleg Belozerov, complained the day before about the agency’s limited ability to attract private money for road construction, since “the scheme for making all decisions is too clumsy.” According to him, the governing body needs “more maneuver to pull up and use private funds.”

According to the Federal Target Program "Development of the Transport System of Russia for 2011-2015" and the subprogram "Roads", by 2015 more than 64 thousand km of federal, regional and local roads will be built and reconstructed in Russia. Costs - 9.9 trillion rubles: 5.3 trillion rubles - center, 1.8 trillion rubles - regions, another 1.1 trillion rubles. from extrabudgetary sources. Rosavtodor expects that investments will bring 7.3 trillion rubles. income and will pay off within 13 years. It is also declared that private funds will be attracted to road construction not only through the investment fund and concessions, but also through the issuance of bond issues and foreign loans. According to Renaissance Capital calculations made at the end of 2007, in the next ten years Russian infrastructure will require investments of about $752.5 billion, of which about $559 billion is required for the construction of highways.

In a conversation with Kommersant, the head of the presidential expert department, Arkady Dvorkovich, confirmed that now we are talking about the creation of an open joint stock company with 100 percent state participation, which can be created on the basis of Rosavtodor. According to him, a new OJSC can be created by analogy with Russian Railways OJSC, and at first it will be headed by a current official responsible for road issues.

Experts were wary of the choice of the organizational and legal form of Rosavtorog. Igor Nikolaev from FBK admits that it is much more convenient for investors investing in road construction to interact with an OJSC instead of a Federal State Unitary Enterprise. But, according to him, the existing legal framework does not provide for the activities of a company with the stated conditions - an open joint stock company without the right to engage in economic activities. And Eduard Faritov from Renaissance Capital fears that the state in these circumstances will not be able to act as a “tough watchdog” over state money. “It is possible to win a tender for the construction of a road at a price of $6 million with a construction cost of $1.5 million,” he concluded.

Arina Kommersant-Sharipova

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