OREANDA-NEWS The bridge to Sakhalin, most likely, will not be built. The reason is the lack of cargo. The main cargo for transportation on Sakhalin could be coal, but coal companies did not declare their interest.

None of the coal cargo owners supported the idea of building a bridge to Sakhalin and transporting goods across the island. According to this information, there is not enough cargo to transport over the bridge to recoup an expensive project.

At the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Wednesday, September 12, President Vladimir Putin again instructed to work out the economic indicators of the project and calculate the volume of traffic. The President said that "the bridge from the mainland to Sakhalin would reveal the potential of the ports of the region, but first it is necessary to calculate the volume of traffic."

At the end of July, Putin has already instructed the government to work out the economic indicators of this project. "This is a long-standing dream of those who live on Sakhalin, including it would be a significant factor consolidating the population, people. You can come and go at any time of the year, in any weather, everything is clear. This would lead to the development of the North of the Khabarovsk territory, because it is necessary to do approaches," the Russian leader said. "I want to help a lot, we need to look at the economy," he added then.

All this information may mean a rejection of the project. In August, the CEO of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov wrote to the Minister of transport Eugene Dietrich, cargo base for the bridge to Sakhalin is now estimated at 8.5 million tons. And the planned construction of a new deepwater port at 46.9 million tonnes.

According to the head of the Department of railway transport research Vladimir Savchuk, the cargo flow for the financial model of the project is calculated incorrectly. Due to doubts about the correctness of the assessment of freight traffic and cost, Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov considers construction impractical. Andrei Belousov, the presidential aide, also doubts the need for a bridge. In one of the government documents, it is said that the payback of the project is not achieved without the money of the Federal budget, and in the other — that if they are allocated, there is a risk of unreasonable expenditure of funds.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was present at the forum, also said that it was necessary to examine the technical and economic component, but already another project-the bridge between Sakhalin and Japan.

At the same time, the presidential envoy Yury Trutnev said that it is necessary to prove the profitability of the project. "While we estimate the cargo base differ. We will try to reduce the estimates. It is quite difficult to predict the payback of a large investment project. There is a complex process, it is heterogeneous, " Trutnev said.