The Cabinet has approved allocation of almost 9 billion rubles ($226 million) for the construction of two ports in the Kaliningrad region, Russia's enclave in eastern Europe on the Baltic Sea.
Distribution of the funds and construction schedule were published on the government's official website Wednesday. The ports will be built under a federal program focused on improving Russia's transportation infrastructure by 2020.
Port construction will be carried out in two stages. The first stage envisages building an 8.5 billion rubles ($214 million) international passenger port able to dock sea yachts in Pionerskoe settlement north of Kaliningrad.
The second stage is construction of a 400 million rubles ($10 million) deep-sea freight port in the Yantarnoe settlement northwest of Kaliningrad.
The city of Kaliningrad already has a deep-sea and river port, the only ice-free port on the Russian Baltic.
The government began planning for an additional deep sea port in 2009. Initially, the port was meant to handle containers and other freight cargo. The locations and the amount of investment, however, underwent multiple changes.
The port was meant to be built not only with government funds but also with partially private investment. In 2012 the project was temporarily frozen after private investors failed to materialize.
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