The construction of a railway from China to Europe through Russia and Kazakhstan will provide an impetus to development of many industries.
Having speech at the Forum of Interregional Cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the construction of a new railway from China to Europe through the territories of Russia and Kazakhstan can become a trigger for development of entire industries, as TASS reports.
The Russian leader noted the positive effect of this project in terms of logistics and development of transit. "I haven’t even mentioned yet that from the logistics perspective this development is going in the right direction and increasing our transit status," Vladimir Putin said.
As Gudok.ru previously reported, the calculations for construction of a cargo-and-passenger high-speed rail line (Eurasia HSR) from Berlin to the Chinese city of Urumqi have already been submitted by JSC RZD to the Ministry of Transport. The project capital cost is estimated at approximately 9.18 trillion rubles, the Russian section costs 3.58 trillion rubles. At the same time, the financial model exludes direct state subsidies.
As the first Vice-President of JSC "Russian Railways" Alexander Misharin explained, the main participants of the construction project of 9.5 thousand km HSR "Eurasia" will be governments, ministries and railway administrations of the participating countries: China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Working groups which have been already established include representatives of these countries. The working groups are aimed at solving certain issues. The duration of the construction will be approximately 8-10 years and if there are no delays the traffic will be launched in 2026.
The main revenue generator should be freight transportation services. According to calculations made by the joint working group, it will be possible to reach a volume of 6 million tons of cargoes (in containers) by 2030 and more than 12 million tons – by 2050 at an average annual growth rate in traffic of 3.8%. Chinese experts give a higher forecast of 7 million and 15 million tons respectively. Passenger traffic will be about 41 million and 51 million passengers for the same years, but the passenger traffic of the Chinese side will be about 40% higher. Total revenues from the use of the line on the Brest – Dostyk section will grow by 7% annually and will reach 750 billion rubles in 2030 and of 2.87 trillion rubles in 2050.
The current structure of transportation services between Europe and China is encouraging: today, the volume of freight (in tons) being transported by airlines on these directions is twice the rail freight volume though the tariffs for air transportation five times higher. This shows the importance of the speed of delivery of a large part of cargoes. The most developed part of the new transport corridor is a part of the Moscow – Kazan HSR, whose documentation has been already provided. The entire "Eurasia" project was developed on the basis of this documentation and the technological solutions incorporated in this segment, thus increasing accuracy of predictive estimates.
The preliminary feasibility study stipulates the participation of the investors consortium in the form of share capital (40%) and attraction of loans from financial institutions (60%). The financing of the projects is expected to be received, in particular, from the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), from the Silk Road Development Fund, from the BRICS Bank and from a number of other financial institutions.
Bella Lomanova
