The mayor proposed reducing the financing of the Arctic Development Program Foreup

The Ministry of Economic Development proposed reducing the financing of the Arctic Development Program from 209.7 billion rubles to 50.9 billion rubles to 2025. This was told by RBC by a participant in the meeting on the development of the Arctic zone.

At the meeting with the Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, they decided to abandon the state support for the construction of the Leader atomic icebreaker worth about 80 billion rubles, as well as the financing of projects of the Ministry of Internal Affairs related to ensuring security in the Arctic zone. In addition, a project was excluded from the program to build funds for the rise of sunken nuclear facilities and several environmental and scientific projects of the Ministry of Natural Resources.

According to the interlocutor of RBC, some of the projects were transferred to other state programs, some are proposed to finance from extra -budgetary funds.

As the source in the mayor explained, the department acts as a curator of the Arctic Development Program. The interlocutor of RBC added that formally the initiative to reduce expenses came from the government, which took into account the comments of the Ministry of Finance, which did not support the draft state program.

The official representative of the Ministry of Economic Development, Elena Lashkina, did not comment on this information, but noted that when the program is agreed, the comments came from one department - from the Ministry of Finance.

The Ministry of Economic Development later noted that the government officially did not approve the funding of the Arctic Development Program.

In February, Kommersant wrote that the Ministry of Economic Development introduced an updated version of the state development of the Arctic zone to the government and proposed to allocate 210 billion rubles from the budget for the development of the region until 2025.

The agency proposed to create support zones in the Arctic, which would help to develop the transport potential of the Northern Sea Route, and increase the export of transport services. The program also spoke of the intention to open mineral and resource centers in the most part of the zones, which are several deposits related to the general infrastructure.

The speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko previously proposed to develop tourism in the Arctic. She said that Russians have an interest in the Arctic zone, but a trip there is “expensive pleasure”.