Putin instructed to allocate another 50 billion rubles for public transport in the regions

President Vladimir Putin instructed the government to allocate an additional 50 billion rubles in 2023. to finance infrastructure budget loans to upgrade public transport in the Russian regions. He stated this during a speech with a message to the Federal Assembly on February 21, 2023.

“This year we have increased the volume of infrastructure budget loans – we are allocating an additional 250 billion rubles. for the development of transport, communal and other infrastructure in the regions. I instruct the government to allocate another 50 billion rubles in addition to these funds. They will purposefully go to upgrade this year public transport in the subjects of the federation, and on the basis of modern technologies,” the president said.

The mechanism for obtaining infrastructure budget loans was approved by the government in July 2021 following a similar presidential address to the Federal Assembly in the same year. Federal funds are provided to the regions on a repayable basis at a rate of 3% per annum for a period of at least 15 years. Loan repayment starts from the third year after its receipt. This, as the government assumed, would reduce the burden on regional budgets.

According to the rules of this program, the region can spend federal funds on the design, construction or reconstruction of communal, social and transport infrastructure. Loans can also be directed to the purchase of urban transport and a number of other purposes related to the development of territories. In total, the government has pledged 1 trillion rubles for these purposes. in 2021-2025

Due to this program, almost 50 infrastructure projects in 21 regions have already been implemented, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin wrote in his Telegram channel. Among the largest projects is the reconstruction of the street. Osinovskaya in Kazan, the construction of a citywide highway in Penza, adjacent to the M5 Ural highway, and the purchase of buses in the Kaluga, Orenburg and Kirov regions.

“In addition, the implementation of another 517 projects for a total of 757 billion rubles continues. at the expense of infrastructure budget loans,” the Deputy Prime Minister said in a statement.

These funds, of course, will not be superfluous, says Mikhail Blinkin, director of the Institute for Transport Economics at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. But on the scale of the tasks that the state faces in terms of updating the infrastructure of the regions, this is not such a lot of money, he notes.

“We have two dozen cities where tram lines need to be changed. There will never be money for this in the budgets of the regions. Therefore, the arithmetic of the state program is in billions of rubles,” he explains. According to Blinkin, these loans to the regions will most likely be written off in 10 years.

Trams fit well into Russian reality to meet average passenger traffic, but it is highly undesirable to put new trams on the old tracks, the expert emphasizes. “This is very reasonable money. They allow us to simultaneously solve the transport problem and load local manufacturers with a guaranteed order, this is a very effective scheme,” Blinkin believes.

Vedomosti sent questions to the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation.