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Russia-China fund to invest $400 million in first bridge across Amur River

The agreement will be signed within the framework of RF President Vladimir Putin’s working visit to China

SHANGHAI, May 20 /ITAR-TASS/. Russia-China Investment Fund (RCIF), established by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and China Investment Corporation (CIC), will invest some 400 million U.S. dollars in the construction of the first bridge across the Amur River, RDIF Director General Kirill Dmitriyev said.

The first on the Russian-Chinese border railway bridge crossing on the Amur River will have the traffic capacity of up to 21 million tonnes per year and will link Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region with China’s Heilongjiang Province, cutting the cargo transportation route by 700 kilometres. The bridge construction will create a new export corridor between Russia and China and remove infrastructure restrictions from the development of new deposits in Siberia and the Far East.

The agreement will be signed within the framework of RF President Vladimir Putin’s working visit to China.

Heilongjiang Province, having an almost 3000-km long border with Russia, already accounts for 25% of foreign trade turnover between the two counties and for about one-third of the total volume of investment co-operation.

In 2014, the Russian Direct Investment Fund is planning to attract about 33 billion roubles (955.9 million U.S. dollars) of foreign investments to the Far Eastern projects. This is almost twice as many as in 2013. As for the investments already made, the figure has exceeded 22 billion roubles (637.3 million U.S. dollars) of which 6.1 billion (176.7 U.S. dollars) came from the Russian Direct Investment Fund and 16.3 billion roubles (472.1 million U.S. dollars) were provided by foreign investors. Russia has attracted more than 60 billion roubles (1.7 billion U.S. dollars) by co-operation with the sovereign funds in Japan, China and South Korea.

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