Eighteen entrepreneurs registered their businesses in the Arctic zone in the past six months.
Artur Parfenchikov, Head of Karelia held an extended meeting of the Council under the Head of the Republic of Karelia on the development of the Karelia territories in the Russian Arctic zone, according to the media communication service of his office. The participants summed up the interim results of the special economic regime and also discussed measures to support tourism and other projects.
“Karelia is one of the leaders in terms of the number of resident companies in the Arctic zone and planned investments. In the coming years, 97 billion rubles will be invested in the development of six Arctic municipalities and almost two thousand new jobs will be created,” said Artur Parfenchikov.
The Arctic zone resident businesses have already invested 12 billion rubles in projects and created 334 jobs.
“The anti-Russian sanctions have made the Karelian Arctic more attractive for investors. Over the past six months, the entrepreneurial activity has significantly increased, and entrepreneurs submitted the largest number of applications to obtain the resident status. Of the 57 applicants, 18 have received this status in the past six months. These applications are being submitted in ever larger numbers,” said Dmitry Rodionov, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs of the Karelian Government.
The Kalguvaara company has recently become one of the Arctic zone residents. It is going to create a stone-cutting workshop in the Louhi district. Another new project is a plant for seaweed baby food in the Kemsky district. Currently, the project is being legally linked to a parcel of land proposed by the government.
The town of Kostomuksha became the leader by the number of special economic regime participants hosting 20 residents, while the Louhi district was the leader in terms of land allocations having assigned 101 land plots to applicants. In total, the local authorities approved 380 decisions to allocate land plots for free use under the “Arctic Hectare” program. The most popular types of land use are private housing projects, which accounts for half of all applications, and the tourism industry.
“Today, the Republic of Karelia is one of the leaders in terms of business support in the Arctic. 12% of all Arctic zone investment projects are implemented in Karelia, 18% - of all planned investments and 26% of already made investments. Karelia accounts for about 35% of citizens' applications under the “Arctic Hectare” program. In general, the results, in our opinion, are very impressive taking into account that the Arctic municipalities are far from the Karelian capital,” said Soslan Abisalov, Department Director of the Russian Ministry for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, who participated in the meeting.
As a result of the Council session, the Karelian Head instructed to pay special attention to providing the Arctic regions with energy resources, and in particular, to possible redemption of costs incurred by entrepreneurs for the purchase of wind turbines and solar panels.
