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On April 23, 2015, a roundtable on Private Initiative in Concessions took place, chaired by Deputy Economics Minister Stanislav Voskresensky, supported by the VEGAS LEX law firm and the Public-Private Partnership Development Center, a non-profit partnership.

Head of the PPP and Infrastructure Practice and Executive Director of the PPP Center Maxim Tkachenko presented a joint study, Private Initiative in Concessions: International Experience and Development Prospects in Russia, supported by the Ministry of Economic Development.

Private companies initiating concession agreements is one of the most anticipated innovations in the concession projects sphere. Starting from May 2015, any potential participant in a concession project will be entitled to apply to a potential concession grantor to initiate a specific concession project. The initiator has to prepare and submit a filled-out application and a draft concession agreement.

The authors of the study have analyzed these practices in 67 countries to see how private initiative works in those countries and propose respective addenda to the Russian legislation. The study team also surveyed the market players on the development and finalizing the private initiative format and drafted recommendations for regional executive bodies to implement private initiative in their regions.

Albert Eganyan, Partner and Chairman of the VEGAS LEX Council of Partners, spoke at the roundtable about the investment potential of private initiative. According to his estimate, the new private initiative mechanism will produce tangible results two or three years into the change. “The consideration period for a concession agreement will be cut to one month from the longest recorded time of 4.5 years,” Mr Eganyan* said. “However, businesses do not believe that it would be possible to analyze the documents in only 30 days, so this promise is overoptimistic.”

Other experts and officials spoke at the roundtable discussing the application of the private initiative mechanism in Russia; they conveyed the business community’s opinion on the issue and their ideas on fine-tuning the concession laws.

• Igor Koval, head of the Economics Ministry’s Department for Investment Policy and Development of Private-Public Partnership;
• Yaroslav Mandron, head of the Economics Ministry’s Department for State Governance of Tariffs, Infrastructural Reforms and Efficient Energy Use;
• Maria Yarmalchuk, deputy head of the Department for Investment Policy and Development of Private-Public Partnership; 
• Pavel Seleznyov, Chairman of the Board of the Public-Private Partnership Development Center.

The participants included representatives of the Transport Ministry, the State Duma, the Moscow Government, Russian Direct Investment Fund, the Administration of Civil Airports federal state unitary enterprise, Rosatom State Corporation, Sberbank, Gazprombank, Russian Railways, Speed ​​Lines, Rostelecom, Morton Group, Leader Asset Management and others. 

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* Source: Kommersant*

For more information on VEGAS LEX’s PPP and infrastructure projects please go here.