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Transportation Ministry to Take Over the Runways
// Russia's airports may become a unified state holding
The consolidating Russia's airlines and aircraft industry, the state may begin taking the country's airports under its wing. Kommersant has learned that the Russian Transportation Ministry has begun developing a unified state company to manage the airports. It may take control over Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, Pulkovo in St. Petersburg and the airports in Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk. The idea will obvious be opposed by the private operators and managers of those airports, however. The majority of industry insiders think that it would be better to privatize the airports faster, rather than former yet another cumbersome state conglomerate.
A high-placed Transportation Ministry source told the newspaper that the ministry is considering forming a unified company for airport management using the state packages in companies and federal unitary enterprises as the authorized capital. “This is the next step in the process the ministry began several years ago... The formation of a unified company will allow us to concentrate financial and material resources and increase the effectiveness of the management of airport assets,” the source claimed. Transportation Minister Igor Levitin began examining the workings of Aeroports de Paris, which incorporates 14 local airports, and a number of other foreign airports last week on a working visit to France. No time limit has been set for the foundation of the Russian state company.
Of the ten busiest airports in Russia, the state owns OAO Sheremetyevo International Airport and the Pulkovo and Sochi Airport federal state unitary enterprises. It also owns controlling packages in Tolmachevo Airport in Novosibirsk and KarasAir, which in turn owns Emelyanovo Airport in Krasnoyarsk. There are 383 civilian airports registered in Russia that handled 31 million passengers last year. Only 45 of those airports operate in the black, but they made a total net profit of 2.4 billion rubles. Rosaviatsia, the state aviation supervision service, manages ten airports as federal state unitary enterprises and 23 as joint stock societies. Their runways, roadways and signal equipment remain state property, but terminals are generally managed by private companies and services are provided by private companies. This is not the first proposal to united Russian airports. All previous efforts to do so have come to naught, however.
Sergey Ryzhkin
All the Article in Russian as of July 10, 2006
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