ARKHANGELSK, March 12. /TASS/. The importance of introducing additional incentives for regions to ensure smooth Northern Supplies is high, Chairman of Yakutia's legislation's committee on economic, investment and industrial policy Pavel Petrov said.
According to him, the delivery of goods along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) "is known for particularly difficult conditions as the goods have to be transshipped from river to sea vessels and onto river-sea vessels." One of the biggest concerns is that companies involved in Northern Supplies lack working capital.
"The only federal state support measure is budget loans to regions," he told the meeting of the State Duma's Committee on the Development of the Far East and the Arctic. "We believe it is time to eye federal state support to the regions to ensure regular, smooth North Supplies, to cut time and cost of delivery."
Proposed measures
He voiced several proposals, including the federal budget's subsidies to regional budgets to reimburse transportation costs, bank interest on loans attracted for Northern Supplies, and to offer investment grants to attract investments in infrastructure upgrade, as well as to make a federal program for preferential loans to build up working capital of enterprises, buying and delivering Northern Supplies' goods, by subsidizing banks to reimburse part of the interest rate from the federal budget.
"The Northern Sea Route within the region (Yakutia) is 2,400 km, and it connects and continues inland waterways, thus forming a single Arctic transport system," Yakutia's representative said. "The functional unity of the Northern Sea Route and inland waterways is an indispensable condition for transport in the region's Arctic. <...> During the 2024 navigation, 125,000 tons of cargo were delivered along the Northern Sea Route, or just 10% of the total delivered cargo. At the same time, the amount of cargoes brought to the region along the Northern Sea Route is increasing annually."
Every year, the region allocates to local companies from the regional budget state guarantees, budget loans and subsidies. "The regional support for cargo delivery is limited by opportunities of the local subsidized budget. Therefore, the government support does not cover real need. Generally speaking, the Northern Supplies program in the region, including transportation along the Northern Sea Route, needs 8 billion 250 million rubles ($95 million)," he said.