Mikhail Mishustin: “Expanding the capacities of the railway infrastructure facilitates high-quality growth in the mining and processing industry and directly influences corporate contracts and employment opportunities, as well as more substantial exports and the development of the nationwide transport potential.”
Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues,
Today, we will discuss the implementation of scheduled railway transport programmes, including the development of the infrastructure, the creation of new logistical routes and efforts to ensure the country’s technological independence.
Railways reliably link our territories and have key significance for regional and nationwide economic development, for expanding trade, investment and co-production arrangements.
This year, the Russian Railways investment programme will exceed 800 billion roubles, and it will finance high-priority projects.
In the next three years, its total amount will exceed 3 trillion roubles. This will also facilitate the development of affiliated sectors and enterprises manufacturing and supplying essential goods.
In an effort to assist businesses under unprecedented sanctions, the Government is prioritising the creation of new transport routes, primarily the Eastern and Sea of Azov / Black Sea corridors, as well as the international North-South corridor. The President has noted the importance of their creation while speaking at international economic forums.
In an effort to establish new export-import logistics, the Government has formulated a comprehensive action plan that also includes various projects for building a high-tech infrastructure. All road maps are to be completed in the period up to 2030, with over 4.5 trillion roubles’ worth of investment, including about 300 billion roubles from the federal budget.
A conservative estimate shows that total freight traffic volumes via the North-South route will soar 135 percent from the level of 2021 during this period, to reach 32.5 million tonnes. The freight traffic volumes via the Azov / Black Sea corridors will increase almost 70 percent to around 300 million tonnes. The Eastern route will handle 25 percent more freight or about 350 million tonnes.
We need substantial production facilities, and we must speed up infrastructure construction rates for implementing all the plans that have been charted.
To facilitate hands-on management and to monitor the implementation of projects, we have set up a management centre headed by Marat Khusnullin. Together with Russian Railways, we have adopted decisions aimed at expanding railway capacities. We have done a lot to streamline legislation, including that for considerably reducing the construction-investment cycle.
The President noted the need to expand the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian mainlines as soon as possible, and he set the task of boosting their annual capacity to 180 million tonnes as soon as 2024.
This year, the Eastern Polygon’s overall capacity will reach almost 160 million tonnes, plus over 125 million tonnes near the ports of the Sea of Azov / Black Sea basin.
Expanding capacities of the railway infrastructure facilitate high-quality growth rates in the mining and processing industry and directly influence corporate contracts and employment opportunities, as well as more substantial exports and the development of the nationwide transit potential. On the whole, this helps achieve the national goals set by the President.
It is important to conduct systemic work in this direction and to link all infrastructure development projects into one single whole, with due account for integration of new territories into Russia’s economic system.
We will now review these plans and current issues in great detail.
