BEIJING, September 09. /ITAR-TASS/. Chinese investors are ready to invest 400 billion rubles (some $10.8 billion) in construction of a high-speed railroad between Moscow and Kazan, First Vice President of Russian Railways Alexander Misharin said on Tuesday.

“The project consists of state support and private funds. The government used to ask us: where would you find the rest of the money? So we have found it,” Misharin said. The Chinese funds will cover Russian Railways’ need for private investments for this project, he said.

In October 2013, Russian Railways reduced the maximum cost estimate for construction of the Moscow-Kazan railroad by 17% to 855 billion rubles ($23 billion). The railway is expected to be launched in 2018.

Russian Highways, also known as Avtodor, plans to attract 70 billion rubles for the construction of the Central Ring Road from a pool of Chinese investment banks, CEO Sergei Kelbakh told ITAR-TASS Tuesday.

“It will be a pool of Chinese investment banks with Russian companies as contractors. The Central Ring Road is in the first place, while the second - we have started to work on the Western Europe-Western China project more actively. The investments in the Central Ring Road stand at about 70 billion rubles,” Kelbakh said.

It is too soon to speak about the amount of investments into the roads which will comprise the Western Europe-Western China transit corridor, as the project is still at the stage of the technical and economic feasibility study, Kelbakh added.

According to the project, the 2,300-kilometer transit corridor will enter Russia’s Orenburg Region from Kazakhstan and will go through the Bashkortostan and Tatarstan republics and Moscow and St. Petersburg.