FX.co ★ Russian President sets a task to build more railways

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin highlighted in his speech the necessity of reengineering the Trans-Siberian Railway (Transsib) and the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM). With this aim in view, the Kremlin is intent upon involving an external expert who is supposed to evaluate the state of affairs and to propose the optimum alternative of reconstruction. “I would like to bring into focus it is essential to structure in details the organization chart of reengineering the Transsib and BAM; to estimate carefully the payback period of the investment project, investments refundability and terms of the payback. I suggest resorting to an external financial advisor who will be appointed on competition basis by the Russian Federation’s government,” Vladimir Putin said at the assembly concening the Transsib development. The government was ordered to arrange the detailed step-by-step draft for each of the project’s stage, to work out the relevant infrastructure and audit. The government will not be able to back up such a massive scale project on its own, so it is supposed to attract private investments. To do this, would-be investors have to comprehend the main aspects of the project; in the words of the president, everything has to be transparent to the fullest degree for the private capital. The reconstruction project of the Trans-Siberian Railway (Transsib) and the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) is included into the trio of the top-priority guidelines, so it is also worth mentioning setting-up the Moscow-Kazan high-speed trunk railway and the Central Ring Motorway construction.