OREANDA-NEWS Russia is among the top three world leaders in terms of the pace of transport development and is leading the largest construction of transport infrastructure in modern history, Russian Transport Minister Vitaly Saveliev said in an interview with the Transport of Russia newspaper.

"Today, Russia is among the top three world leaders in terms of the pace of transport development… Today, the largest construction of transport infrastructure in modern history is underway. We rent 18 significant objects on average in just one year. There are many sources of financing for capital investments in the industry," he said.

He noted that in the early 2000s, the industry could afford to build only a few facilities per year. "It was only about public investments, business remained on the sidelines because it could not plan its development even for a year or two," the minister described at the time.

Saveliev added that the transport industry together with the country has passed a difficult, thorny path.

"From the decline, disorganization and underfunding in the 90s to the revival and transformation into a single system working in the interests of citizens and the state. There were difficult times for the industry, this is also part of our history. Today, the transport complex is at a fundamentally different stage of development. Everything has changed dramatically: equipment, technology, management system, speed of decision-making, volume of information processed, quality of service. We would not have been able to achieve such a result without a consistent policy, energetic actions of the country's leadership and the President of Russia," the minister believes.