OREANDA-NEWS. June 28, 2013. Vladimir Yakunin, President of Russian Railways, says that the development of infrastructure will combine the real and banking sectors.

"Today, thoughts about whether to invest in infrastructure, in fact, do not have any objective basis. These conclusions are presented in a special report commissioned by the European Railway Agency and the Association of Railways," said Yakunin at a panel session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

He noted that, according to one of America's leading bankers, there was currently a tendency to reduce the maturities on loans in the United States.

"It's something that in Russia we went through for a long time - a period when it was impossible to obtain long-term loans. This, of course, hindered not only the development of infrastructure projects, but also industrial projects, which in turn reflects a certain trend in separating financial capital from physical capital. That's what happened 30 years ago, when the financial sector become an independent business with huge profits, but did not understand very well what it was actually financing," said Vladimir Yakunin.

Yakunin also said that today's decision by Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus to establish the Integrated Transport & Logistics Company (ITLC) created a unique opportunity to combine the efforts of the various railways in the Eurasian space. Transport cooperation in the Eurasian space creates a huge potential for development by enabling goods produced in Asia-Pacific countries, primarily in China, to be delivered to Europe, and to export European products to China.

"It is necessary to create such projects in order to overcome the existing separation between financial capital and the real economy - and projects not only with high returns. It is necessary to define clearly areas for international cooperation. This kind of international cooperation will undoubtedly lend a strong impetus to cooperation not only between railway companies, but also between the banking sector and industry," said Yakunin.