SOCHI/MOSCOW “ Infrastructure bonds worth 500 billion rubles ($6.7 billion) to finance road construction across Russia are planned to be placed starting 2021, they will be covered by state guarantees, Vyacheslav Petushenko, the board chairman of state-run road-building company Avtodor, told reporters.
In late August, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin told reporters about the government’s plans to expand the pool of projects for financing through infrastructure bonds to 500 billion from 300 billion rubles. Among the projects that apply for bond financing, he mentioned the new Moscow-Kazan highway, its potential extension to Yekaterinburg, as well as bypasses of large cities.
“The set of projects has been approved. Why 2021? Because 2020-2021 is the time to pull up design and survey work for these and other facilities,” he explained, adding that 500 billion rubles is only the volume of bonds issued, the cost of the projects themselves, which can be partially financed from them, is much higher.
The bond issue will be covered by government guarantees, he said.
