Airports of Regions Group to invest 150 bln rubles in concession projects with Russian airfields
VLADIVOSTOK. Sept 8 (Interfax) - Investment by Airports of Regions Group in concession projects, which include the construction of both terminals and airfield infrastructure, is estimated at 150 billion rubles, the company's CEO Yevgeny Chudnovsky said at VEB.RF's Climate of Trust plenary session held as part of the 2025 Eastern Economic Forum.
"The concept of the so-called infrastructure levy has been adopted, whereby operators will be able to start investing through concession agreements in the development of airfields specifically, which was not typical for us - this has always been a state function. And this market is another approximately 150 billion rubles in investment that we must make. Again, with the caveat that it is very important for us to think about the tariff implications," Chudnovsky said.
In total, the group has four concession projects, two of which involve airfields, he said. Using other financing mechanisms and with the participation of VEB.RF, the group has implemented 18 airport projects, with another five in the implementation stage - Kamchatka, Orenburg, Blagoveshchensk, and two greenfields (i.e., built from scratch) - Arkhyz and Omsk. The latter two involve the construction of both terminal complexes and airfields.
As reported, on September 1, amendments to the Air Code came into force, legalizing infrastructure levies on airlines for the reconstruction of airfields carried out under a concession with private investors. Such levies will be collected within a group of airports (to be determined by the investor) and directed towards reconstruction of one or more of them. The collected funds will be accumulated through the AGA (a) federal state unitary enterprise, which is subordinate to the Federal Air Transport Agency, and directed to airport owners to compensate for their investments.
The rules for forming the levies must be approved by a government decree. The draft document was submitted by the Transport Ministry for public discussion at the end of August. According to the proposed formula, the investment levy per passenger carried will be 150 rubles, and it will be indexed to the annual inflation rate. In some cases a correction factor may be applied to the formula (for example, if passenger traffic decreases on an annual basis).
Airports of Regions is one of the largest private investors in airport infrastructure in Russia. The company manages the aviation complexes of Yekaterinburg, Saratov, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Novy Urengoi, Samara and others.
