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ST. PETERSBURG, June 14 (RIA Novosti) - A commission has picked four projects to get money from Russia's new Investment Fund, but the choice has yet to be approved by the government, a deputy economics minister said Wednesday.
Kirill Androsov said at an economic forum in St. Petersburg that the commission had picked projects including a plan to build a toll highway in St. Petersburg and a highway between St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The other two projects will build a network of oil refineries and petrochemical plants in Nizhnekamsk, a town in the Volga River republic of Tatarstan, and develop infrastructure in Nizhneye Priangarye, the least developed eastern part of Russia's giant Krasnoyarsk Territory in Siberia.
The first project, proposed by St. Petersburg-government-owned ZSD Co., will cost an estimated 82.69 billion rubles (some $3.05bln). The developers are asking for 28.02 billion rubles ($1.03bln) from the Investment Fund, set up in 2005 to develop infrastructure projects across the country with public and private financing.
Building a St. Petersburg-Moscow road would cost 54.93 billion rubles ($2.03bln), while 25.80 billion rubles ($953mln) has been requested from the fund.
In the Volga area, Tatneft, a major oil company owned by the government of Tatarstan, wants 34.10 billion rubles ($1.26bln) of fund money to build a network of modern refineries with an annual capacity of 7 million metric tons of sour oil (140,575 bbl/d) and other petrochemical facilities, which cost a total of 130.30 billion rubles ($4.8bln).
And the Siberian project requires 358.71 billion rubles ($13.25bln) in investment, while 34.22 billion rubles ($1.3bln) were requested from the fund. But Androsov said the investment commission had cut potential investment in Nizhneye Priangarye to 16.5 billion rubles ($609mln) of private funds.
The investment commission examined a total of 46 bids for Investment Fund money Wednesday, selecting four.
The four projects have still to be considered by a government commission, Androsov said.
