Head of Russian Railways talks about political reasonability in situation with Mechel
Edited by Rhod Mackenzie / 2014-04-01 06:31:54
The Head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin has answered for questions of the RBK and commented on the situation around Mechel:
- Q.What Mechel’s assets do you really interested in?
- A.Well, what they (Mechel) say: “We can propose 321 km of house track, which is 95% constructed, its prime cost is about 70 billion rubles now”. But it isn’t known how much money is necessary to complete the construction. As a railway is not air ball or flower shop, it can be only a core asset for us. We invest into the upgrade of the Baikal-Amur Mainline and the Trans-Siberian railway, and Elga makes this eastern section of the Baikal-Amur Mainline pay-your-way from the point of view of investment into upgrade. So we want Elga to work as well as possible. And then I said that we could. But there are no sources for $70 billion, no sources even for $ 7 billion in our investment program. Therefore, if the Government is interested in this, it must decide how I will have this source. This can be done through the payment to Russian Railways’ authorized capital. That's the whole story.
