Revenues of the Russian Railways Holding from foreign projects to reach almost 500 billion rubles in 2019.

Sergey Pavlov, the first deputy managing director of the Russian Railways, said that by the end of 2019, the Russian Railways Holding expected to earn more than 467 billion rubles in revenue from foreign activities. Mr. Pavlov was speaking at the final meeting of the company’s board in 2019. Sergey Pavlov also stressed that next year, the company expected to increase the figure to 550 billion rubles. In Mr. Pavlov’s opinion, the holding company has the necessary capacity to achieve this target, both with regards to engineering, construction, and supplies, as well as in the transportation of goods and passengers.

Mr. Pavlov reminded the board that 19 agreements on the development of cooperation have been signed with foreign partners in the field of railway transportation and infrastructure construction this year, as well as two new contracts, one with Cuba for the modernization of the country’s national rail network and the supply of rolling stock and equipment, and another with Serbia for the design and creation of a Unified Control Center. The contracts are worth more than two billion euros.

In addition, Mr. Pavlov said that African countries, as well as Uzbekistan, Belarus, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, and a number of other countries, were showing an interest in the work of the Russian Railways Holding.

The company’s first deputy managing director also praised the work of the Ulan-Bator and the South Caucasus Railways, which Russian Railways manages through a form of trust management, shares, and concessions.

“Ulan-Bator Railways will start implementing a program to modernize the infrastructure and upgrade the locomotive fleet next year. This will boost the development of the Russia-Mongolia-China Central Corridor as one of the main transit routes for the delivery of goods between Asia-Pacific countries and Europe,” Sergey Pavlov said.

In terms of developing transit, Mr. Pavlov said that a big breakthrough has been made with regards to the application of digital technologies in multimodal transportation. For example, in September, the Intertran project was launched, which uses digital technology to deliver goods door-to-door by both sea and rail transportation.

“Since the launch of this technology, 470 containers have been shipped, and it is now being used to deliver goods from ports in China and South Korea to the Russian Railways stations, which also makes it of great interest to our colleagues in Azerbaijan and Belarus. Next year we plan to expand the geographical reach where this technology can be applied, so that we could extend it to our nearest neighbors,” Mr. Pavlov noted.