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Putin positive on Arctic Palladium project

Operations on the loan market, particularly overseas, are becoming increasingly challenging, the chief executive of Russian Platinum said at the meeting

MOSCOW, November 18. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has given an upbeat assessment to the project on palladium production in the Arctic zone at the meeting with chief executive of Russian Platinum Musa Bazhaev.

Russian Platinum and Norilsk Nickel established Arctic Palladium joint venture to develop palladium resources in the region.

"The payback is good, as I see. Total investments are $15 bln and the net profit is $3.7 [bln]. The payback will be complete in slightly more than four years," Putin said. Project indicators are excellent, he added.

"Yes, we have a very good project," Bazhaev said in his turn. "The industry believes this is one of the best projects since the collapse of the Soviet Union," he noted.

Operations on the loan market, particularly overseas, are becoming increasingly challenging, the chief executive of Russian Platinum said at the meeting.

"Certainly, I would to request you to possibly take into consideration that it is more difficult to work with borrowings at present; there are actually none of them on the international market. Nevertheless, we do not feel down. We start proactively working with domestic financial institutions and they support us," Bazhaev added.

In February 2018, Norilsk Nickel and Russian Platinum signed an agreement on strategic partnership, involving the creation of a joint venture for the further development of ore deposits of the Norilsk industrial region. The Arctic Palladium joint venture was registered in the summer of 2018, the contribution of Norilsk Nickel to the JV authorized capital was the license to develop the Maslovskoye deposit, contribution of Russian Platinum was the license to develop the southern part of the Norilsk-1 deposit and the Chernogorskoye deposit. The companies own the joint venture on parity basis.