Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has ordered his government to turn Siberia into an attractive place to live and work within the span of a decade by developing three essential sectors of local industry: mineral resources, high technology, and tourism. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin discussed these plans with governors and other officials at a meeting on priority investment projects in the region.
“Our goal is to improve living standards in the regions beyond the Urals and to make Siberia attractive to people – all within ten years. In fact, Siberia will need a new industrialisation plan in order to realise its competitive advantages,” Vladimir Putin said in his opening remarks.
The government has long determined its priorities for Siberia. These plans include intensive exploration and development of its natural resources as well as creating high-tech hubs and one of the country’s major tourist centres. Fortunately, the region has rich mineral as well as human resources.
In July 2010, the government drafted and approved a development strategy for Siberia through 2020, which essentially formalized these three priority policies. However, Putin called the meeting’s attention to one important issue. In his words, a considerable portion of Siberia's priority projects is being implemented within public-private partnerships. “We are building infrastructure facilities, while business is responsible for industrial projects,” he said. “The government is honouring its commitments.” Implicitly, similar behavior must be expected of the businesses involved.
According to the Regional Development Ministry’s data, 200 investment projects are now underway in Siberia, with 27 of them labeled “priority” projects and total financing estimated at 1.8 trillion roubles. The prime minister mentioned a few of them in detail.
Of the priority projects, some of the most grand in scale have thus far included essential road construction projects, such as the Baikal federal highway, with federal allocations planned at 4.5 billion roubles, the Yenisei road (over 330 million roubles), and the Chuysky Trakt project (540 million roubles in 2010), which is to be completed in 2012.
“Several sections of the Kansk-Boguchany-Kodinsk highway have been opened, and the road is to be completed by the end of 2010. The bridge across the Angara is to be completed in 2011. A railway line is being built to facilitate mining in the Trans-Baikal Region. The line from Narym to Aleksandrovsky Zavod opened for service in 2010. Work on the project is ongoing,” Putin said.
In addition to transportation infrastructure, however, there is an acute need for housing and social services in Siberia. The Cardiovascular Surgery Centre has been opened in Krasnoyarsk. Now it is essential to ensure high standards of healthcare services in the region. A modern residential community is currently under construction in Kemerovo, but that too is not enough. Other projects are designed to resettle people from dilapidated housing and to build comfortable base camps for shift-workers near oil and gas deposits.
Speaking about the development of tourism in the region the prime minister said the following: “The government has decided to establish four special tourism zones in Siberia: in the Altai Republic, in the Altai Territory, in Buryatia, and in the Irkutsk Region. Two of them have already started servicing tourists, with more than 100,000 people spending their vacations there this year.”
By Anastasia Savinykh