OREANDA-NEWS. April 14, 2011. "The further development of the industry is necessary above all to increase traffic in the interest of developing Russia’s economy. To develop rail infrastructure alone, we have to invest over 2 trillion roubles at 2010 prices in the main routes of Russia’s rail network by 2020. This is a huge sum, but the failure to make such a capital investment will lead to a real inability to transport several hundred million tons of cargo every year," said Vice-President of Russian Railways Salman Babayev at the plenary session of the II Eurasian Transport and Logistics Forum, reported the press-centre of Russian Railways.  

According to Babayev, significant investments are needed in the large-scale development of rail infrastructure. Babayev singled out three main areas for such investment:

routes serving the ports of North-West and South Russia and Russia’s Far East,

a supporting transport network to enable the development of new mineral deposits and thus ensure the realisation of Russia’s export-import and transit potential using the Trans-Siberian Railway,

improving transport provision of Russia’s central region and the Moscow transport hub.

"In 2011, Russian Railways plans to invest 349 billion roubles in modernisation and the replacement and development of fixed assets. This is 10% more than in 2010, but the budget allocation for the development of rail infrastructure is not enough to meet the planned needs of the economy and the population’s requirements for rail transportation," said Babayev.

"The necessary financing," said Babayev, "could be raised by bringing rail freight tariffs into line with the economic cost, establishing a "network contract" and issuing government infrastructure bonds."