The Ministry of Transport confirmed that the first concession agreements on the Baikal-Amur Mainline may be signed in 2023. The facilities will include expensive man-made structures: three tunnels and a bridge across the Amur River which will cost about 600 billion rubles. The intention to build them on the basis of concessions was expressed by Bamtonnelstroy-Most owned by Ruslan Baisarov and Gazprombank. As early as last year RZD JSCo decided not to include the facilities in the program of the third expansion phase of the BAM and Trans-Siberian Railway, thus considering a limited investment program. But now, according to experts, the investments can be justified: there is a demand for any infrastructure that extends the path to the East.

The Ministry of Transport confirmed that the involvement of a concession participant in the construction of the Eastern Domain is being considered for four facilities on the BAM. According to Valentin Ivanov, Deputy Transport Minister, the second Severomuisky, Kuznetsovsky and Kodarsky tunnels and the bridge over the Amur River are envisaged.

The idea of building a second Severomuisky tunnel, which would expand the capacity of the first, the longest railway tunnel, from 16 million to 100 million tons, was proposed by the President's Commission on the fuel and energy sector in August 2018 (see Kommersant of August 30, 2018). According to estimates of RZD JSCo, the construction work would have taken ten years, while the Institute for Economics and Transport Development estimated the project at RUB 261 billion (see Kommersant of November 26, 2018). Sibantracyt owned by Dmitry Bosov has expressed its willingness to extend the tunnel in five years and for RUB 60 billion in exchange for priority passage of their cargo traffic (see Kommersant of July 15, 2019).

The full text of the article can be found on the website of newspaper Kommersant.​