The estimated cost of the Finnish state's backlog of needed repairs to roads, railways and waterways rose by more than 100 million euros last year. The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency published its latest data on Monday.

The agency said that the price tag for the total backlog of repairs now adds up to almost 4.3 billion euros. That would cover the cost of fixing infrastructure that is in poor or very poor condition. It covers state-owned transport routes, not municipal streets or private roads, for instance.

At the end of last year, by far the largest chunk of this ‘repair debt’ was for state roads, which the agency says need over 2.6 billion euros in maintenance. A large proportion of this is for less-used roads.

The rail network needs approximately 1.6 billion euros in repairs while 29 million euros should be spent to maintain water transport routes, the agency said. The figure for waterways is virtually unchanged from last year’s report.

The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency has updated its repair needs calculation annually since 2016, with the shortfall in needed expenditures increasing practically every year.

Meanwhile Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) has vowed to push ahead with a new high-speed rail line between Helsinki and his native Turku that could cost up to four billion euros.

The government’s overall state budget for this year calls for spending of just over 90 billion euros.