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Barents boom town No 1

The city of Syktyvkar is ranked top five in a all-Russian ranking on business development,

Syktyvkar, capital of the Komi Republic, is declared the most dynamically growing city in the Russian part of the Barents Region.

Location

Syktyvkar has the quickest growing business community of all major cities in Northwest Russia, a rating presented by news agency RBC concludes. The city has a growing service sector, increasing salaries and a steadily growing number of new enterprises, RBC reports.

In the all-Russian ranking of cities with more than 150,000 people, the Komi capital is ranked number five after the cities of Krasnodar, Belgorod, Stavropol and Abakan. No other cities in Northwest Russia are ranked in the study which includes only the 25 best in the country.

Syktyvkar has a population of about 240,000, and in 2013 had a slight demographic increase. The average local salaries of 36.000 rubles are among the highest in the country.

The Komi capital was founded by Catherine the Great in 1780 and was first named Ust-Sysolsk. It is situated along the Sysola River, in forested lands south in the Komi Republic. Syktyvkar has for centuries been a key center for the Komi people, which today still has about 30 percent of the local population. 

The Komi Republic has for years been among the economically strongest regions in the Russian north, dominated by oil industry and forest processing companies. As displayed by figures from Patchwork Barents, the region is the only of the five Barents subjects which has had a steady growth in industrial production over the last ten years.