Private investors flee Russian infrastructure(3)

Private investors are abandoning infrastructure partnerships in Russia after the government cut back its budget by 90 percent.

Deputy Transport Minister Andrei Nedosekov said the country would now spend “10 times less” on transport infrastructure than the Rb2.5 trillion (€58 billion; $75 billion) planned before the credit crunch.

Several public private partnerships are understood to have been binned in Russia.

“I would not characterise this as a collapse,” claimed Thomas Maier, head of Infrastructure at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. “We see a number of PPPs that are operating within this difficult context.”

There are only two public private partnerships still on the table, according to The Moscow Times: the 43 kilometre highway development between Moscow and St Petersburg and the re-development of Moscow’s Polka Airport.