In 1911 the central government begun to provide financial assistance to cities in the fight against epidemics and improve water supply sources.

[2] As of 2014, there were at least 23 contracts with private companies to manage water utilities or plants with an investment commitment of almost 2 billion US dollars.

The largest foreign investor in the Russian water sector is Austrian EVN Group, which holds three contracts for treatment plants.

[4][5] In 2003, the Saint Petersburg utility signed a concession agreement for the Southwest wastewater treatment plant with a Swedish-Finnish consortium.

In parallel, a plan to bid out a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract for a water treatment plant was championed by the city governor Valentina Matvienko, but was abandoned in 2013.

However, concessions such as the one planned for Saint Petersburg may not be financially viable because Russian President Vladimir Putin imposed a national water tariff freeze.