Northern Sea Route Development Experiencing Delays and Cost Overruns Because of Shortages of Skilled Workers and Attempts to Attract Them with High Salaries

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 21 – Russia’s much-ballyhooed Northern Sea Route is currently facing serious shortages of skilled workers needed to complete development projects on land. To try to attract more workers, companies are increasing the salaries they are prepared to pay; but that is creating another problem: pushing up costs at a time of budgetary stringency.

            According to Maksim Maksimov, an expert consultant for the Russian North television channel based in Vologda, shortages of personnel is “one of the key systemic problems in the development of the Norther Sea Route” and one that the project has not been able to overcome (caspian.land/37380-severnomu-morskomu-puti-nuzhny-kvalificirovannye-kadry.html).

            Attempts by the companies involved to lure specialists from other places by offering high salaries has created another problem: the costs of these projects increase dramatically, something that makes them targets for cutbacks by a government that is facing budgetary restrictions due to the growing costs of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine.

            Consequently, higher salaries are at best a stopgap and may end by forcing Moscow to cancel projects because they have become too expensive to finance at the present time.