ABSTRACT
The Russian Far East makes up over 36 percent of Russian territory yet accounts for only around 5 or 6 percent of GDP. The RFE has a very small population, around 5 percent of the population of the Russian Federation and supplies around 6 percent of Russian GDP overall. The economies of the region are not well diversified often relying on a single industry or a small set of commodities such as gold, diamonds, silver, oil, gas, copper, tin, coal, semi precious stones, and other natural resources. The costs of mining these resources are often prohibitively high. And although these commodities are valuable, they are far more valuable if they are processed into completed products rather than sold as raw materials, which is what happens in the RFE.
