“Russia’s federal budget plans around $320 million for the development of tourist infrastructure for this year and two coming years,” Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday, according to RIA news agency.
“I signed a government decree, whereby we will allocate subsidies for the establishment of supporting the infrastructure of tourism clusters in 22 regions. The federal budget provides in total for these purposes about $320 million for this year and two next years,” the Prime Minister said.
“Russia has very good opportunities for development of tourism but normal conditions have not been established everywhere,” Medvedev said. Appropriate programs for various national projects have been provided to improve the situation, he noted. In particular, ecological tourism will be developed under the Ecology national project.
“New comfortable hotels, camping areas, cafes and car hire should appear in 24 clusters at the expense of the government support – that is, normal and full-fledged tourist infrastructure should appear,” the Prime Minister said.
“Certainly, regional authorities need to repair existing facilities, bring communications into order, possibly provide transport access to sights of interest for tourists and make them normal and civilized, so that our people and foreign citizens have a desire to come and spend time there,” Medvedev noted, adding that all that “should be done with attention paid, proper prioritization and efficiency money management.”
