“Rosssiiskaya Gazeta”: “Economic Tourism”
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Kislovodsk yesterday to conduct a meeting of the Regional Development Commission and to assess the health and recreation industry in the area.
The choice of the venue for such a meeting was not fortuitous. Although Sochi is considered to be Russia's main holiday resort, Mineralniye Vody has an equal claim to being called a national health resort. The Government has declared it to be a Special Health and Recreation Economic Zone.
It is not by chance that the prime minister had decided to discuss the current state and prospects for the Russian tourist industry there. The government is of the opinion that the industry's potential is not fully tapped. Minvody is the only place in the world where about 130 mineral water springs are concentrated in a small area. Kislovodsk, for example, has the world's largest health park with an area of almost 1000 hectares. However, foreign tourists prefer the smaller, but more comfortable and better publicised resorts of Karlovy Vary and Baden-Baden.
Spas are still popular with Russians, but the accommodation leaves a lot to be desired. Russia has everything for a successful tourist industry except the infrastructure and the quality of service. Take, for instance, Mineralniye Vody airport. One of the largest air hubs, catering to the whole of Northern Caucasus, it does not measure up even to domestic, let alone international standards. Its infrastructure and equipment are outdated. Even its look is outdated. Attempts to build a new runway (the current one is 30 years old) were scotched by the economic crisis: Sberbank closed the credit line. The same happened to the air terminal when it turned out that the company which contracted to modernise it had simply run out of cash.
Before the meeting Vladimir Putin was shown the present and future of the local tourist industry. He made a brief stop at the Dolina Narzanov (Narzan Valley) sanatorium and looked at the exhibition of tourism investment projects in the Stavropol Territory. The modern four-star sanatorium sits smack in the centre of Kislovodsk and accommodates 5000 visitors a year.
In spite of the hard economic times, the local authorities have ambitious plans. For example, building a special Health and Recreation Zone in Zheleznovodsk. It will have two names: a romantic one, "Mountain Sea" (if such a sea is created) and a prosaic one, "Mt. Razvalka Area" (apparently if the sea is not created). It will accommodate five thousand holiday makers at any one time. The big selling point of the project is to be an artificial sea, three metres deep with an area of 180,000 square metres. It will cost 30 billion roubles and will have a payback period of seven years. But it will create about 3500 jobs and yield about 3 billion roubles in revenues every year.
In addition to tourism, the conference discussed budgets of different levels for 2010-2012 provided the need to be economical, and assessed the effectiveness of regional anti-crisis measures. The Stavropol governor, Valery Gayevsky, is familiar with the problems not only of his own territory but of the whole Southern Russia. He took part in developing the system of evaluating the performance of governors and was at one time Deputy Regional Development Minister of the RF. So, it was a good choice of venue from that point of view as well. In addition to Gayevsky, the Commission meeting was attended by about a score of governors, the President's Envoy to the Southern Federal District Vladimir Ustinov and cabinet ministers from Moscow: First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Deputy Prime Ministers Alexei Kudrin and Sergei Sobyanin and Healthcare and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova.
The discussion of the system of inter-budgetary relations produced the idea of adjusting the mechanism of financial assistance to regional authorities and the introduction of advanced technologies into the budget process. Incentives to increase the regional and municipal revenue base will be another instrument. To improve the quality of budget management the time-tested "stick and carrot" method will be used. The budgeting process in the regions will be monitored and assessed, with good performance to be rewarded and poor performance punished. Moscow says it will watch how governors fulfill their public promises.
The prime minister came down to the budget subject without much ado. The government has approved the basic parameters and is now finalising specific programmes with the regions' help. Both the federal and regional revenues have dropped, but the consolidated regional budget is still in the black, the prime minister stressed. "But this does not mean that we have no crisis," he warned. He said populism and wastefulness are harmful and dangerous: the budget spending priorities should be fulfilling social obligations to Russian citizens.
The consolidated regional budget must be balanced. In 2010 more than 1 trillion roubles will be allocated "to cover the priority needs of the regions." The regional authorities in turn should expand their revenue base by developing small and medium business and by removing administrative barriers.
The prime minister warned that if the governors choose to borrow money they should do so "with the utmost care." "Unfortunately, we have seen some negative practices lately. If you run up debts this year, what will you do about them next year?" Putin snapped ,indicating that the government may not be able to allocate billions to repay these debts. Even so, the total financial support of the regions will not be reduced, subsidies will continue just like subventions for the payment of housing and utility rates.
The prime minister said excessive spending and superfluous institutions should be scrapped. As it is, "we often see the opposite approach to identifying priorities," he lamented. The salaries of civil servants are rising, the cost of the upkeep of executive bodies in the crisis year 2009 have grown by 4% and in some regions by more than 25%. The latter include Magadan Region, Ingushetia, Murmansk Region, Moscow and some others. Federal agencies too are not without sin. "We urge everyone to live within their means, and one should start with oneself," Vladimir Putin concluded.
Kira Latukhina
