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Russian Finance Ministry to allocate 150 bln rubles to build Moscow-Kazan high-speed railway

Russian President Vladimir Putin assumed that a Moscow-Kazan railway will be not a high-speed track, but just an express rail route

NOVO-OGAREVO, July 31 (Itar-Tass) - The Russian Finance Ministry agreed to allocate 150 billion rubles from the National Welfare Fund to build a Moscow-Kazan high-speed railway, Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said at a meeting on the infrastructure projects here on Wednesday.

In his words, a total funding for the construction of the Moscow-Kazan railway is planned at 937 billion rubles, including 650 billion rubles of state support. “Preliminarily, the Finance Ministry confirmed 231 billion rubles from 650 billion rubles, including 150 billion rubles from the National Welfare Fund and 81 billion rubles of budget grants,” the minister said. 139 more billion rubles will come from 30-year bonded loans to be borrowed from pension savings. “But for this purpose state guarantees are needed,” the transport minister noted.

Russian President Vladimir Putin assumed that a Moscow-Kazan railway will be not a high-speed track, but just an express rail route. “For our country, this is a new project; actually it will continue logically the work to develop the high-speed train traffic. We are saying now about a high-speed track, we have the express rail routes between Moscow and St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Helsinki. We should think it over how it (the high-speed traffic - Itar-Tass) is realizable, how it is economically feasible. Probably, we can just build an express rail route,” the president said at a meeting over the infrastructure projects on Wednesday.

Putin noted that, according to the plans, this railway “should be commissioned already in 2018.” He added that it may be extended to Krasnoyarsk.

Russian President urged to avert swindling in the land buying-up in the construction of a Moscow-Kazan railway.

“I hope that the chief executives of Russian federal constituent territories are interested in this issue and will take a thorough approach to the settlement of the issues, which are related with the implementation of the project, particularly this concerns the assistance in the withdrawal of the lands for the construction of the railway and the facilities on the railway,” the president said at a meeting over the infrastructure projects on Wednesday.

“I would like to avert swindling in this issue so that no one will buy up the land hastily and then will sell it at a much higher price,” Putin noted.

Putin urged the participants in the meeting to put this issue under the toughest control.