The concessions market is shaking. The story with the Water Concessions did not have time to subside…

The concessions market is shaking. Not the story with water supply concessions in Saratov managed to subside, Once again, Volgograd with its public-private partnership does not allow itself to be forgotten.

The Arbitration Court of the Volgograd Region is considering a claim from the Directorate of Rosprirodnadzor for the Astrakhan and Volgograd Regions against Water Supply Concessions LLC in the amount of over 550 million rubles to compensate for damage caused to the water body. The meeting will take place on November 30. But it all started so beautifully!

Since the beginning of the development of public-private partnerships, great hopes have been placed on the Volgograd region. Two concessions for the Volgograd water utility and the Volgograd heat supply system with the participation of IC Leader became the largest in the entire European housing and communal services sector in 2015 – it was planned to attract almost 90 billion rubles. investments and carry out a complete modernization of utility infrastructure. But that was not the case. Governor Andrei Bocharov, who came in 2015, had his own view on the development of PPP. Reporting to the president about “restoring order” and solving infrastructure problems, the talented manager Bocharov brought the situation to a technical default of concessions (and this despite an increase in housing and communal services tariffs in the region by 60% over 5 years) and billions in losses for the concession companies LLC Water Supply Concessions and LLC “Heat supply concessions”.
Andrei Bocharov began to work with the long-suffering concessions, which deprived citizens of heat for weeks in cold weather and dug up the streets with repair trenches on top of fresh repairs, without particularly understanding the topic. First, a landing party of his assistants landed in the company, completely seizing control from IK Leader and removing the concessionaire from conducting business. For 1.5 years, Bocharov’s team “ruled” the concessions until the situation reached a crisis. Then the governor decided to buy the companies from the Leader. True, more than 7 billion rubles had to be spent on this. regional rubles from the bins of Volgogradoblektro JSC and Development Corporation JSC. And the PPP projects were covered just as the floodplain of the Tsarina River was covered with fecal drainage from the KV in the fall of 2022.
And what? The money is government money, the feds will throw in some more, the paper will endure everything, the signatories are former employees of the mayor’s office and members of Bocharov’s team. They signed the Leader’s withdrawal from the concession. By the way, the leaders of the Volgograd Region Development Corporation change like gloves, especially on the eve of the arrival of the leaders of the RF IC in the city – the current signatory Anna Chernova is the 12th in a row, the former head of the documentary support committee of the Volgograd administration. Soon, the cleaners and drivers will get there.
Or maybe it’s the projects of the Development Corporation and Volgogradoblektro, and they were chosen as a kind of “cemetery” of concessions for the region, completely brought to crisis or bankruptcy by the talents of the hyperactive Bocharov and his brave Timurovites, like Alexander Sivakov, who came from Bryansk with him ? After all, the projects in the portfolio of the Development Corporation are entirely unprofitable and have nothing to do with PPP – the infamous “Red October”, concession for urban electric transport, etc.
But everything is not enough for Bocharov. True, now he, apparently, has decided to stay away from housing and communal services and industry – the budgets are not the same, people are nervous, the center is looking at him askance – he can also be punished for loss of trust. It is safer to master the project of creating a tourism cluster on Sarpinsky Island for more than 100 billion rubles. The accomplices, however, are old – the same IR Leader, which Bocharov just paid to get out of the water and heat concessions. The mayor’s office claims that the residents of Volgograd are simply sleeping and watching how eco-trails and eco-hotels will unfold on Sarpinsky. It is not clear when development priorities changed in the region. Goodbye to the Volgograd Tractor Plant, Red October special steels, Khimprom, Kaustik, jobs, modern housing and communal services? It’s better to add 100 billion worth of bike paths, there will be no consequences. And the money has been spent, and there are paths, it’s not industrial production to build. As Governor Bocharov says in this case at every meeting with the President of the Russian Federation: “Today the situation in the Volgograd region is stable.”