Federation Council hosts meeting on Arctic transport corridor’s prospects
© RIA Novosti. Vladimir Fedorenko

Federation Council hosts meeting on Arctic transport corridor’s prospects

The Federation Council hosted a meeting of the Arctic and Antarctic Council, whose members discussed the Russian Arctic transport corridor and its development prospects.

The meeting focused on the modernization of the Northern Sea Route and its long-term development, as well as on establishing a national Arctic container-carrier line with hubs in Murmansk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

"In the next decade, it will be possible to set up international transport hubs at the Murmansk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky ports that would link South East Asian transits with those in northwestern Africa and Europe via a Russian Arctic transport line," said Nikolai Pegin, general director of the Kamchatka Territorial Development Corporation, while reporting on the national Arctic transport corridor.

Meeting participants also summed up the results of the council's work last year. Council chairman Vyacheslav Shtyrov, representing the executive branch of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, noted that the adoption of a decision on the need to draft a special law on the socioeconomic development of the Russian Arctic was a major achievement of 2015.

This year, council members will have to accomplish two main tasks — drafting a federal law on the development of the Russian Arctic and the state Arctic program, he added.