( FT ) - Russia plans to invest $1,000bn to modernise its dilapidated infrastructure over the next 10 years, taking its oil-fuelled economic recovery into a new phase.
President Vladimir Putin said private investors, including foreign ones, would have a significant role in what could be one of the biggest infrastructure and industrial construction programmes outside China.
His comments on Friday at an investment forum in Sochi, southern Russia, signalled a shift from consolidating power and hoarding the huge energy revenues flowing into the country to more actively investing in development.
But Alexei Kudrin, acting finance minister, said the state would contribute only about 20 per cent of total investment.
"We expect that private investors will play an increasingly noticeable and leading role in the large-scale modernisation of the economy," Mr Putin said.
Mr Kudrin said Russia's total investment in fixed as-sets was set to double from $168bn in 2006 to $370bn (€264bn, ?185bn) by 2010 - compared with $40bn in 2000.
Sergei Ivanov, acting first deputy prime minister, said state investment would be 3.8 per cent of gross domestic product in the next two years, rising to 4.5 per cent by 2015.
Russia plans to use public-private partnerships to attract private investment.
The first of two pilot PPP projects, to build a highway linking the transport hub of St Petersburg, Russia's second city, to the national road network, will shortly choose between four bidding consortia, including western construction groups.