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“Efforts to hold the APEC Summit in Vladivostok resemble the pains of Baron Munchausen to pull himself by the hair out of a marsh. He failed while we are obliged to succeed since there is no way back,” audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin said at a meeting in Vladivostok on Tuesday analyzing the preparation works.

During his visit to Vladivostok, Stepashin together with Primorye’s Governor Sergei Darkin and the region’s top officials visited the sites allotted for the construction projects and held a meeting to discuss the state of the preparation works for the Asian-Pacific Economic Summit to be held in Vladivostok in 2012.

Stepashin did not mince words, saying that the remaining four years until the summit is a very limited amount of time for the grandiose construction planned for Vladivostok.

“Let us speak frankly – we have not yet reached the level and pace of construction which we had in Soviet times. Presently we do not have any time to dawdle,” Stepashin said.

None of the planned construction and renovation works concerning bridges, hotels, roads, an airport, an aquarium and other projects in Vladivostok have been started so far.

“It is necessary to promptly solve in federal ministries and departments the number of issues in order to speed up the feasibility studies of the objects to be constructed for the summit,” Stepashin said.

Primorye’s Governor Sergei Darkin revealed that the feasibility study for the bridge to be constructed over Vladivostok’s Zolotoy Rog Bay was submitted to Moscow officials more than a year ago and has been kept idle there since then. The transfer of the land on Russky Island belonging to the military for civil utilization is also stuck in negotiations between the ministries.

Stepashin noted that Primorye’s administration should be ready to thrust its efforts for preparation of the summit. “In terms of international importance for Russia, the 2012 APEC summit is ranked second after 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and there will not be another such chance to pull the city out of its current depressed condition,” Stepashin said.

Naming the Russian Far East a ‘territory for large budget investments,” Stepashin said that the region’s image of high crime level scares off potential investors. According to Stepashin, foreign businesses have fears instead of trust and do not view the Russian Far East as a territory for investment. This negative tendency should be eliminated, Stepashin stressed.

149 billion rubles ($6.2 billion) is planned to be invested into preparing the infrastructure for the summit in Vladivostok and on Russky Island. 100 billion rubles will be given by the federal budget, another 11 billion rubles by Primorye’s administration and 38 billion rubles are expected to come from private investors.

However, the federal financing for the summit has not arrived in Vladivostok, so far failing a long-distance travel between Moscow and Vladivostok.