Major Infrastructural Projects in Russia: Experience and Results

The amount of investment megaprojects increases every year. Due to its technical complexity, high economic costs and dependence on multiple external factors, megaprojects often turn out to be economically ineffective. The probability of a project failure varies a lot depending on the industry and type of project. Statistically, hosting the Olympic Games projects are the ones to have the highest rates of frequency and percentage of cost overruns. The expenses related with these projects are constantly growing. The authors analyze the indicators of economic effectiveness of making investments in major infrastructural projects of Russian Federation. Hereafter, the authors study the experience of implementing such projects on the whole territory of Russia, and analyze in detail the results of creating and using the Olympic venues of Sochi-2014. The authors’ research has shown that payback periods of the Olympic venues vary from 19 (“Bolshoi†stadium) to 198 years (“Fisht†stadium). Clearly, these results do not correspond even to the Requirements of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, defining economically effective projects as those with payback period less than or equal to 5 years. However, the implementation of such projects can be considered as the creation of public goods, with their further active use by the population of the country.