Project Finance Copying and distributing are prohibited without permission of the publisher

Russian PPP - well supported, but hard to finance

17 December 2010

The three deals that closed in Russian PPP this year took years of effort and ended with little risk transfer to the private sector. Can legislative changes build on these substantial but untested foundations? And can the PPP sector tap new forms of funding and spread to social infrastructure? By Antony Collins.

Read more: [pulkovo] [Odintsovo] [st petersburg] [waste] [ppp]

The simple transactional record might lead you to believe that 2010 was a landmark year for PPPs in Russia. Three large pilot projects all reached financial close, and market participants long considered that these deals would be the breakthrough that the Russian PPP sector needed.

While the deals – the Pulkovo airport, the Odintsovo Bypass and the Moscow-St Petersburg highway – closed and attracted billions of dollars in financing, they were complex and took years to finalise. Their efforts have, to an extent, masked some of the deeper problems that still remain in developing PPPs in Russia. Most ob­viously, there is doubt as whether they would have ever have been successfully procured if they had launched in the current climate.

“The projects to close were all really ambitious but it is worth remembering that they were launched when the economy was stronger,” comments Kirill Ratnikov, the head of infrastructure and PPP...


Upcoming Events

Change font size: Switch to default font size Switch to medium font size Switch to large font size