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List of top priority investment projects in Russia’s Far East to be finalized in Jan 2015

By now, fourteen sites and 18 investment projects have been preliminarily selected for advanced development areas
Vladivostok, one of the largest Far Eastern cities ITAR-TASS/Yuri Smityuk
Vladivostok, one of the largest Far Eastern cities
© ITAR-TASS/Yuri Smityuk

MOSCOW, December 12. /TASS/. The final list of investment projects for Russia’s Far East will be agreed by late January 2015, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister and presidential envoy in the Far Eastern Federal District Yury Trutnev said on Friday, adding that first round of selection would take place in December.

By now, fourteen sites and 18 investment projects have been preliminarily selected for advanced development areas. It is planned to attract up to 90 billion rubles ($1.6 billion) in investments to these areas in the next few years. The Russian State Duma passed a law providing for special legal regimes for business and other types of activities in advanced development areas on November 12. In the next three year, advanced development zones can be created only in the Far Eastern Federal District, and in other Russian regions later on.

“We did not wait for the law to be passed. We kept on working in all the nine regions of the Russian Far East and by now we have complete analysis,” Trutnev told the Russia-24 TV channel. The task for the next three years, in his words, is to launch five advanced development zones and a number of investment projects in the Russian Far East.

He said that such zones of advanced development would help boost Chinese investments in the Far East. Chinese businessmen are more accustomed to the practice when the government creates a system of privileges in top-priority directions and “strongly insist we do the same,” Trutnev noted.

Russia welcomes foreign investors in all economic sectors but will prefer projects in the energy sector, ship-building, infrastructure, Trutnev said ahead of a meeting with Chinese business executives in Beijing. Chinese businesses have demonstrated interest in gold mining in the Far East and timber processing. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, with its $9 billion  investment portfolio in Russia, is interested in closer cooperation, including with the Fund for the Far East Development.