About 9.5 billion roubles (1 rouble roughly equals 32.9 U.S. dollars) will be allocated to the Urals Sverdlovsk region to create a special economic zone Titanium Valley, according to the government’s resolution published on Wednesday on its official website.

In 2011-2013, a total of 951 million roubles were allocated for these purposes from the Sverdlovsk region budget, in 2014 the sum is planned at 841 million roubles. But an overall cost of the construction of the first phase of infrastructure facilities in 2012-2016 is estimated at 25.031 billion roubles. So, the Russian government thinks that if the project is financed from the regional budget and off-budget sources (12.4 billion roubles) only, the timeframe of the project will inevitably be extended, hence the development of the zone will be hindered. It is planned to create 2,160 new jobs in the Titanium Valley zone by 2023. Tax revenues are expected to reach 11.5 billion roubles by that time.

In this context, the Russian government has decided to transfer an additional sum of at least 4.7 billion roubles to the Sverdlovsk region budget and instructed the ministry of economic development and the ministry of finance to fix extra sums of up to 4.8 billion roubles as allocations to the Sverdlovsk region in the federal budget for 2015 and a bigger period of up to 2017.