TASS, January 24. The Russian Government is discussing with China the insurance of cargo shipped along the Northern Sea Route (NSR), Russia's Deputy Prime Minister and the President's Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yury Trutnev said in an interview with Rossiya-24 TV channel.

"Right now, many shipowners do not use the Northern Sea Route simply because the cargo is not insured. While insurance is necessary. We have discussed the issue at a meeting with representatives of the People's Republic of China, because China has a very powerful banking system, they would be quite capable of doing it," he said.

The traffic has been growing, and NSR is becoming a competitive global route, he added.

Additionally, Chinese businesses are interested in implementing investment projects on the Kuril Islands. "As of now, after the (preferential) regime was announced there a little over a year ago, there are 29 projects - this is quite a number. Some offers are from China. We've organized for them a business mission to the Kuril Islands, a total of 23 companies, and some offers have been made," the official said.

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.