MTK North – South received a superstructure

President Vladimir Putin has appointed by decree the Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Saveleva as his special representative and head of the working group on the development of the international transport corridor North-South. The group included President’s adviser Igor Levityn, Minister of Transport Roman Starovoit, his deputy Dmitry Zverev and CEO - Chairman of the Board of JSC «RZD» Oleg Belozyorov.

These changes will allow to coordinate efforts for development of MTK «North-South», the need for such coordination certainly existed, sure the head of international cooperation and logistics of NATO «Directorate of International Transport Corridors» Natalia Zadonskaya. She recalled that the North-South MTC Agreement provided for a Coordinating Council. «Russia thus raises the level of management decisions on development of the corridor», - says the expert.

MTK North-South consists of three routes - two land and one sea, - and their coordinated development requires complex inter-ministerial work, recalls expert of the Caspian Institute of Strategic Studies Alexander Karavaev. «This complex coordination requires a separate body headed by a sufficiently authoritative person with high bureaucratic weight in the transport industry», - notes the analyst. The appointment of Vitaly Saveleva to this post shows that the issue of development of ICC North-South is given very high attention. 

The working group headed by Vitali Savelev will be an adjunct to all existing coordination structures, such as «Directorate of international transport corridors», RZD, VTB bank. The tasks facing it go beyond economic and economic activities of the Russian Federation and extend to foreign countries, in the belt of allies and partners of the Russian Federation, says Alexander Karavayev.

Among such tasks, the expert highlights several areas:
- It is necessary to finalize the route for the western segment, promote the development of a full CTE and take steps to form a consortium for the construction and development of projects of the North-South MTC; 
- Solving the problems of infrastructure support and development of logistics environment in the economic zone of the corridor; 
- monitoring of the existing cargo flow and analysis of the opening of bottlenecks within the current budget, in some cases with the participation of business;
- Development of a strategy for the future development of MTK North-South.