GANDHINAGAR /India/, January 12. /TASS/. Indian authorities and businesses are very interested in the development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), Russia's Deputy Minister for Development of the Far East and Arctic Anatoly Bobrakov told TASS.

"Prime Minister [of India Narendra] Modi back in 2021, at the Eastern Economic Forum, confirmed the interest in using the route. Indian companies, including shipping companies, are interested in training their sailors in the Arctic navigation at our educational institutions. They do not have experience of the kind, and this experience is not easy. Whether there's any interest? Yes. Is the interest big? In my opinion, it is big, because it is a transport route of the future," the official said.

That was his response to the question whether the Indian authorities and businesses have an increased interest in the project amid the attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea. The deputy minister, participating in the Vibrant Gujarat summit in India's Gandhinagar, noted that in the previous year (2023) the Northern Sea Route's traffic hit a record (of 36 million tons of cargo).

"We are launching satellites for the safe navigation. According to the plan to develop the Northern Sea Route, by 2035 its traffic will make 220 million tons of cargo. The Russian government and the Russian economy are working to make this route a truly global transport corridor," he added.

The Northern Sea Route is a shipping route in the Russian Arctic that runs along Russia's northern shores in seas of the Arctic Ocean (the Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi and Bering Seas). It connects the Russian Federation's European and Far Eastern ports as well as the mouths of navigable Siberian rivers into a single transport system. NSR's length from the Kara Gate Strait to the Providence Bay is 5,600 km.