The Belkomur railway line is Russia’s response to the Chinese One Belt, One Road initiative. Given the shift in export-import flows towards Asia and the reduction in trade with the West, this line is becoming even more important for Russia. However, analysts say that the implementation of this project may take years, because it still needs to find funding. It is reported by Railway Supply magazine with reference to RailFreight.

Belkomur
Picture: GRID-Arendal, Flickr

The Belomorsko-Komi-Uralskaya line should directly connect the regions of Siberia and the Urals with industrial and mining enterprises of the North-West. Belkomur is the shortest route connecting the industrial regions of Western Siberia with some of the northern seaports of Russia, in particular with the port of Arkhangelsk.

The relevance of the railway was emphasized by Vitaly Savelyev, press secretary of the Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation. Cargoes from these industrial regions are mainly oil, gas, coal and bauxite, as well as manganese and chromite ores, timber and lumber. All these products together provide up to 70% of all foreign exchange earnings to the state budget of Russia. The expected capacity of the new railway line is 35 million tons of cargo per year.

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The idea of ​​the Belkomur railway is not new. In fact, plans to connect the resource-rich Perm Territory, Komi and the Russian White Sea region appeared for the first time in Stalin’s time, but it was not until 2004 that the first real business plan for the project was prepared.

Since then, plans have changed several times: from cooperation with the Nordic countries to investments by Chinese enterprises. In 2019, this finally developed into an agreement between Gazprombank and the governments of the Komi Republic and the Arkhangelsk Region. An interregional company “Belkomur” was even created, which is responsible for the implementation of the project.

However, over the past two years, little has happened in the implementation of the railway line. Despite the project’s importance to the Russian state, most independent local analysts believe the project could take years to complete. The implementation of the project will be fraught with serious difficulties, as in most other large-scale infrastructure projects in Russia at the present time.

The total investment is estimated at 330 billion rubles ($5.6 billion), making Belkomur one of the largest investment projects in the Russian railway industry for the coming years. It is planned that the railway line will have a length of 1252 km. 712 km need to be built from scratch, and the existing railway sections are in dire need of modernization and reconstruction. A record number of sleepers (about one million) will be required.

“Currently, the Russian federal government cannot find funds even for smaller similar projects. In the context of sanctions against Russia, it is obvious that the priority may be the expansion of existing transport arteries (primarily the Trans-Siberian Railway), rather than building new ones from scratch.” – noted Sergey Zhavoronkov, senior researcher at the Institute for Economic Policy and a well-known expert in the field of railway transport.

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