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Expert: Arctic development will open Indian, Chinese markets for Russian regions

The development of the Northern Sea Route will open markets of India and China for Komi, the Urals regions, will favor the economy in the Arkhangelsk Region, and the Nizhny Novgorod Region, which is capable of working on big shipbuilding projects

MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/. The development of the Russian Arctic Zone and the Northern Sea Route will favor bringing Russian products to markets of India and China, Director of the Center for Information-Economic Modeling Stanislav Chui said at the Russian Construction Week on Wednesday.

"The Arctic today is the route for Russian regions to access international markets," he said. "What markets do we normally eye - we either are fighting for Europe, or for the American markets. At the same time we forget that mentally it is much more convenient for us to do business with India, China."

"The sea route is the cheapest option," he continued. "When we consider the navigable Arctic, then within similar 25 days we can reach practically any destination in India, in China, and to export any cargo, say, from Yekaterinburg."

"This way, the [Russian] regions will be developing," he added.

Thus, he stressed, the development of the Northern Sea Route will open markets of India and China for Komi, the Urals regions, will favor the economy in the Arkhangelsk Region, and, for example, the Nizhny Novgorod Region, which is capable of working on big shipbuilding projects.

Deputy Director General of the Primorsky Region Development Corporation Oksana Nemtseva, in her turn, said the Bolshoi Kamen industrial park, which is not far from Vladivostok, could be a logistics hub for the cargo transportation between Russian regions and the Asia-Pacific Region.

"We are ready to offer at our platform both land plots and plots with industrial and warehouse facilities, if required, moreover, it <…> is necessary to focus now on the Asia-Pacific market, and in this situation our platform [of the Bolshoi Kamen industrial park] could be a logistics hub to handle cargo moving from Asian countries to Russia’s western part," she said.

The Northern Sea Route is a shipping route and the main sea line in the Russian Arctic sector. It stretches along northern coasts of Russia across the seas of the Arctic Ocean (Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi and Bering seas). The route consolidates European and Far Eastern ports of Russia and navigable river mouths in Siberia into a single transport system. The route’s length is 5,600 km from the Kara Strait to the Providence Bay.

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