MOSCOW, October 28. /TASS/. By the end of the current year, the container traffic from China to western ports via the Northern Sea Route (NSR) will double year-on-year to 400,000 tons, the Rosatom State Corporation's CEO Alexey Likhachev said.

"We have been expanding joint work with Chinese counterparts. By the end of the year, the container traffic from China to western ports [via NSR] will make 400,000 tons, which is twice bigger year-on-year," the Strana Rosatom newspaper quoted him as saying.

Activities on NSR are growing, he continued. The corporation has issued this year 1,196 ship permits, and 1,340 ship voyages have taken place (20% growth year-on-year). Transit has increased, and already amounts to 3 million tons of cargo (8% growth year-on-year). "Despite the sanctions, first shipments from the new Arctic project, Arctic LNG-2, have begun," he said.

Further development of the logistics sector and the Northern Sea Route is based on the president's order to create the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor (TTC), which will connect all territories adjacent to NSR into a single system and will combine capabilities of sea, river, rail and road transports, he noted. At the same time, NSR will become TTC's key section and its cargo traffic will grow due to mining in the Arctic, bigger international transit, and TTC's connection with the domestic railway network. "This is a huge, national task. We are to ensure reliable and safe navigation in the Arctic, and we will do a lot of work to develop communications and navigation, ship maintenance systems, rescue infrastructures, as well to upgrade seaports in Northwestern Russia, the Arctic and the Far East," he said.

About NSR's development

In 2018, the Russian government authorized Rosatom as the Northern Sea Route's infrastructure operator. The plan to 2035 to develop NSR, in terms of Rosatom's responsibility, provides for the creation of necessary infrastructures - from icebreaking vessels building to the creation of ports. In 2024, the Rosatom State Corporation, together with involved federal executive authorities, formed a new federal project - the Development of the Great Northern Sea Route to create a single economic, transport and logistics space from the Russian ports of the Baltic Sea to the Primorsky Region (internal sea waters, territorial sea and adjacent land territories of the Russian Federation). The result would be to expand NSR by integrating into it the ports of St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Further on, has emerged the concept of the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor - from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok through the Arctic Zone ports. Its implementation is expected to lead to a comprehensive transformation of the Far East's economy.