Future Transport Network in Siberia will Depend On Whether It has Its Own Center and Produces Finished Goods or Remains a Source of Raw Materials, Verkhoturov Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 14 – Current discussions of transportation network plans for Siberia and the Russian Far East fail to address an underlying issue that will both depend on and shape whether these enormous regions will become producers of finished goods or remain as now primarily suppliers of raw materials, Dmitry Verkhoturov says.

    For more than a century, Russia has developed its transport network west of the Urals depending on which of these models was chosen. Where the regions involved were to become producers of finished goods, it chose a radial pattern; otherwise it did not. And such a radial pattern depended on establishing a center, the Siberian economic commentator says.

    So far, Verkhoturov says, Moscow and Russian political planners more generally have failed to make that decision for Siberia and as a result, they have not come up with plans that serve either one or the other or that can be realized in a generation or two. And that will remain true unless a decision is made (sibmix.com/?doc=16492).

    Consequently, he suggests, all those concerned about the development of Siberia and the Russian Far East need to make a decision on this point before they choose one or another kind of transport network – and people in
the region have a compelling need to decide on where the center of their macro-regions is going to be.

    Unless that happens, Verkhoturov says, Siberia and the Russian Far East will remain economic backwaters, suppliers of raw materials to others rather than become regions with their own production of finished products both for consumption by their own populations and for export earnings.