Road modernization postponed
Russia’s ambitious program for modernization of roads and other transport infrastructure can be reduced by 2/3 in average over the next five years. One of the roads that may suffer is M-18, crossing through the Barents region from St. Petersburg in the south to the Norwegian border in the north.
In May last year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed the ambitious Federal program “Development of the Transport System of Russia for 2010-2015”.
The Program was supposed to allocate enormous amount of investments – 4,65 trillion rubles during the next five years or almost 14 trillion rubles considering the allocations of the regional and municipal budgets and private investors. Almost 2/3 of this sum was supposed to be invested in reconstruction and building the new Russian highways – 7,3 thousands kilometers of roads of federal significance and 10 thousands kilometers of roads of regional and municipal significance. The Government was going to invest in average 650 billion rubles annually in the highways construction.
Nowadays the federal Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development offer to cut the financing of the transport projects sharply. The federal investments which were planned for 2010 are to be reduced 2,3 times – to 219 billion rubles, the 2011 program will be cut by 66% and in the year 2012 the investments will be reduced by 70%. Obviously the road construction program for the northern part of the country should suffer to much more extent because the roads in the south are expected to be financed according to the previous plans. These are first of all the highway M4 “Don” from Moscow to Novorossijsk which cost is over 600 billion rubles and the road Djubga-Sochi (over 43 billion) because they are connected to the construction of Olympics-2014 objects. Also the central territories of the country most likely will not suffer – the central circular highway around Moscow (283 billion) and the road Moscow – St. Petersburg (340 billion).
Most likely the reduction will touch on the projects of modernization of the roads which by the government’s opinion do not have a strategic importance for the country. In its number – the reconstruction of the road M-18 connecting St. Petersburg, Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and the Russian-Norwegian state border. According to the previous plans its reconstruction had to be started in 2010 and be finished in 2013. Also the plans of reconstruction of the road from St. Petersburg to the Finnish state border can suffer.
The large-scale program of construction of new railroads is most likely to be reduced too. But it was initially planned to be financed mainly by the state-owned company “Russian Railroads”. The company was going to invest 5,7 trillion rubles during five years while the federal and the regional budgets allocations in the program are only 1,2 trillion. A big part of the railroad program is construction of the new railroad from the industrialized part of Urals region to the Polar Urals (the so called “UPUP” project). In the beginning of August the federal committee for selection the investments projects of federal significance has approved the project of “Belkomur” railroad which should connect the Arkhangelsk sea port with Komi Republic and Perm region. These two roads (UPUP and Belkomur) together with the planning railroad BarentsKomUr which will connect Urals region, Komi and the sea port in Indiga could in the future make a skeleton of the future transport system of the European North of Russia.
The article is prepared by the Norwegian Barents Secretariat’s office in Arkhangelsk and the figures are based on an article in the newpaper Transport Rossii (No. 35 - 2009).
