Economy of Saint Petersburg

St. Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial center of Russia specialising in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminium alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses.

Major local industries are Admiralty Shipyard, Baltic Shipyard, LOMO, Kirov Plant, Elektrosila, IIzhorskiye Zavody; also registered in St. Petersburg are Gazprom Neft[citation needed], Sovkomflot, Petersburg Fuel Company, BaltGaz Group, and SIBUR among other major Russian and international companies.

Meteor hydrofoils link the city centre to the coastal towns of Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Petergof, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk from May through October.

Saint Petersburg has an extensive city-funded network of public transportation (buses, trams, trolleybuses) and several hundred routes served by marshrutkas.

Saint Petersburg Metro underground rapid transit system was opened in 1955; it now has 5 lines with 64 stations, connecting all five railway terminals, and carrying 2,8 million passengers daily.

The city is a node of the international European routes E18 towards Helsinki, E20 towards Tallinn, E95 towards Pskov, Kyiv and Odesa and E105 towards Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Kirkenes (north) and towards Moscow and Kharkiv (south).