Regions have been granted the right to participate in the development of federal highways

President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin has approved a new law giving regional authorities the opportunity to take part in the modernization of the federal road network. The document significantly expands the range of funding sources for works on federal highways.
Thanks to the new law, the constituent entities of the Russian Federation have the right to implement their regional transportation initiatives on the federal road network held in trust by the Russian Highways State Company. In fact, the law allows launching projects where there is a high interest of the regions, but which are difficult to realize only at the expense of federal funding. At the same time, the regions get an opportunity to accelerate the construction of important road and transportation facilities, which in turn will provide a number of positive effects: increased connectivity of territories, reduced logistics costs, increased investment attractiveness of the regions and the development of domestic tourism. And due to the fact that project implementation, including the attraction of off-budget financing, will be conducted through the mechanisms and competencies of Russian Highways State Company, the subjects will not have to undertake the complex structuring of concession projects, debt service and subsequent road maintenance costs.
In recent years, the State Company has accumulated vast experience in the implementation of road infrastructure agreements using public-private partnership mechanisms. This is an effective solution for attracting debt financing to the road sector, which allows the state to retain control over project implementation while significantly reducing the burden on the budget.
To date, Russian Highways State Company has attracted about 1.1 trillion rubles in returnable investments in high-speed road construction projects. Over the last three years alone, the State Company has analyzed more than 30 regional projects. The total length of the reviewed projects is about 888 kilometers. For all the analyzed projects, the traffic intensity was assessed and preliminary financial modeling was carried out. One third of the projects have received conclusions and recommendations on technical solutions.