Humanities & Social Sciences 12 (2016 9) 2917-2927 ~ ~ ~ УДК 332.025.12+332.330.15 Economic Evaluation of the International Kyzyl – Urumqi Railway Construction Project in Conjunction with the Ulug-Khem Coal Basin Development David F. Dabiev and Vladimir I. Lebedev* Tuva Institute for Exploration of Natural Resources of the SB RAS 117a Internatsionalnaya Str., Kyzyl, Tyva Republic, 667007, Russian Federation Received 06.10.15, received in revised form 18.04.16 accepted 25.09.16 The present article demonstrates that construction of a railway through Tuva and Mongolia to China is an interesting and challenging problem from both economic and geopolitical points of view. <...> The authors remark that the greatest and the most profitable share of railroad cargo is coking coal exported to China, which in the last years has been facing a huge deficit for utilization of its metallurgical plants’ capacities. <...> Should the international railway be constructed along Kyzyl – Ulangom – Hovd – Urumqi, almost all large and medium South Siberian deposits will be highly demanded on both domestic and international mineral product markets. <...> The research leads us to the conclusion that the optimal option for Russia China and Mongolia would be a tripartite international treaty, on the basis of which the budgets of the party states finance up to 50% of capital costs provided in the estimate for the Kyzyl – Urumqi construction as per shares stipulated in the treaty, while private investors provide the rest. <...> The mineral resources of the Republic of Tuva are comparable with the those of the richest territories of the Siberian Federal District, such as the Krasnoyarsk Territory (Krai), Kemerovo and Tomsk Oblasts; however, concerning social and economic development, Tuva still lags behind. <...> Significant deposits of coking and power © Siberian Federal University. <...> The cumulative value of the mineral deposits found in Tuva (with the deduction of their extraction and processing costs), as evaluated David F. Dabiev, Vladimir I. Lebedev. <...> Economic Evaluation of the International Kyzyl-Urumqi Railway Construction. by Tuva Institute of Comprehensive Natural Resources Development of the SB of the RAS (TuvICNRD SB RAS), exceeds 4 140 billion US dollars (Lebedev, Kuzhuget, 1998). <...> In point of fact, Tuva is cut off the main throughways, so in the post-reformation years its mineral resources have been developed <...>