Summary of Working Paper No. 19-1995

III.01.1: 'The Significance of the NSR for Regional Development on Arctic Areas of Russia'.

By Alexander Granberg, Council for Location of Productive Forces and Economic Cooperation, Moscow, Russia

The main objective of the present paper is the assessment of the NSR significance for the economy of Russia nowadays and in the future (especially for its northern and Arctic regions) with the account of opportunities given by international economic cooperation.

Three stages of the NSR development are distinguished in the paper: 1) development of the NSR as the main transport line in the Russian Arctic (up to the end of 1980s); 2) period of political and economic transformation in the USSR and Russia (up to the present moment); 3) the nearest future and long-term period according to the forecasts of economic development in Russia and international economic cooperation in the NSR zone, as well as the possibilities for other transport networks use.

The author tries to answer the following main questions:

are economic stabilization and subsequent development of the North (including the Arctic) necessary for the national, and, possibly, for the world economy, and what are the requirements to the scale and structure of the economy of the North;

is it possible to develop the economy of the Russian North without the NSR or under its depressive state, but with the emphasis on other transport systems;

what are conditions for and directions of the restoration and increase of shipments and traffic capacity of the NSR;

what kind of policy should the state pursue in relation to the NSR;

what are the potentialities for international economic cooperation in the NSR zone.

Materials on the economic development of Russian northern regions (official statistical data; federal programmes and forecasts; studies of economic institutes, including those carried out with the participation of the author), on the NSR operation (data of the Marine Transport Department of the Ministry of Transport, reports of the Institute of Marine Transport, results of other INSROP projects, information on projects on the international cooperation in the NSR zone, are used in the paper.