OREANDA-NEWS. October 16, 2012. Vladimir Yakunin, the President of Russian Railways, attended a round table on "Privatisation: Government Objectives, Investors’ Expectations", which was held in Moscow, reported the press-centre of RZD.

"Privatisation should address a company’s specific strategic objectives. I strongly disagree that the point of privatisation is just to privatise as many state assets as possible. And therefore there cannot be a single approach towards the privatisation process in different countries," said Yakunin.

Yakunin cited the experience of China, where the authorities had not privatised any strategic industry. The government had opened small, medium, and high-tech business to private initiatives, but had left everything else under state control. At the same time, effective cooperation between government and business was effected through the Club 600, whose membership comprises senior officials and businessmen in equal measure.

Vladimir Yakunin said that the high degree of instability in the global economy made it very worthwhile considering investing in the infrastructure sector.

"If we now privatise 25% minus 1 share of Russian Railways, we will earn less money than the Company’s annual investment programme. At the same time, when we privatised assets such as TransContainer and Freight One, we effectively eliminated the sources of revenues for the Company. And that in turn increased the pressure on the government in terms of funding investment in infrastructure," said the president of Russian Railways.

"Nowadays, Russian Railways is working on an open and competitive market. We are "x-rayed" not only by the players on the transport market and the Russian government, but also by rating agencies and auditing firms. We place our paper better than any private company. Just today we closed the book in London on an additional placement of Eurobonds in U.S. dollars with a yield of 4.05% for 10 years - a unique transaction in the history of Russia. That indicates that public sector strategic planning and the general direction being implemented by the Company’s management are pulling in the same direction," said Vladimir Yakunin.