MOSCOW, February 5. /TASS/. The Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade will allocate 15 bln rubles ($153.1 mln) to Russian Railways for traction and rolling stock procurement, Minister Anton Alikhanov said.
"We are looking for ways to solve the situation with a significant reduction of orders of the Russian Railways for traction and rolling stock in this year," the minister said. "I regret saying that we did not find any extra financial leverage other than reserves of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, fifteen billion rubles. The credit burden level of Russian Railways is such that they were unable to take any debt and we essentially had to allocate these funds for pure capitalization of Russian Railways," Alikhanov noted.
The ministry hopes that it will enable keeping the situation and preventing downsizing at plants, he added.
"Certainly, we also have the task with Sinara as regards high-speed production facilities. It is also stipulated by the National Project but we do not see risks in this regard so far; we are proceeding in line with instructions given by the President at the turn of the last year," the minister noted.