YAKUTSK, December 4. /TASS/. The development of the Northern Sea Route, one-third of which runs through Russia’s Yakutia Republic in the Far Eastern Federal District, will cut transport costs for the republic’s Arctic zone, Yakutia head Yegor Borisov told TASS on Thursday.
“The development of the Arctic is impossible without the Northern Sea Route,” he said, commenting on President Vladimir Putin’s state-of-the-nation address to the National Assembly. “This will make it possible to considerably cut the transport costs for the Arctic regions that are currently in logistical isolation,” Borisov said. And “the regional road funds’ expansion” will give an additional positive effect for these territories, he added.
According to Putin, the Northern Sea Route project “should become not just a transit route, it should also stimulate business activity in the Arctic.”
Yakutia’s road fund currently amounts to some 4.3 billion rubles ($80 million).