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The North Caucasus Federal District Development to 2025 programme is designed to stimulate regional economic development by creating new centres of economic growth, coordinating the Government’s infrastructure investment and business investment strategies with due regard for the priorities of spatial development and available resources.
The agency responsible for implementing the programme is the Ministry of Regional Development and the associate agencies are the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Finance. Participating in the programme are the Ministry of Healthcare, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Sport, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Federal Road Agency, the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Protection and Welfare, the Federal Agency for Tourism, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Federal Bailiff Service and the Federal Guard Service.
The programme includes 11 sub-programmes, including several aimed at stimulating business and investment activities, developing local industry zones and creating new economic pivots:
Sub-programme 1: Strengthening the investment attractiveness of the North Caucasus Federal District;
Sub-programme 2: Development of Kavkazskiye Mineralnye Vody as a specially protected environmental and resort area;
Sub-programme 3: Development of the tourist cluster in the North Caucasus Federal District, the Krasnodar Territory and the Republic of Adygeya.
Seven territorial sub-programmes (one for each region of the North Caucasus Federal District) will focus on the district’s effective long-term development planning and its regions’ influence and resource sufficiency.
The objective of Sub-programme 11 is to create institutional, information and strategic conditions and research methods for implementing the North Caucasus Federal District Development to 2025 programme and taking other measures to ensure balanced territorial development.
Other instruments for implementing the programme are the South Russia 2008-2013 and the Socioeconomic Development of the Republic of Ingushetia 2010-2016 federal targeted programmes.
It has been proposed to continue using the South Russia programme, which was scheduled to end in 2013, for the development of the North Caucasus Federal District until 2020.
The programme aims to create conditions for the development of the real economic sector in the district and improving the people’s quality of life and prosperity.
Its objectives are:
- to stimulate investment activity and attract money to the district; to create a modern tourism infrastructure in the special tourism and leisure zones in the district; to create new jobs in competitive industries and to reduce the natural unemployment rate; to implement projects aimed at converting idling defence enterprises to civilian production and at diversifying production;
- to ensure the growth of personal incomes and to reduce unemployment; to modernise education, healthcare and social protection systems and social services; to ensure the accessibility of medical assistance at all stages;
- to ensure the accessibility оf preschool education; to create conditions for increasing the share of pupils timetabled for morning classes, as well as increasing the birth rate and life expectancy in the district.
The programme’s benchmarks of favourable socioeconomic conditions and positive environment for innovations are as follows:
- the size of investment in fixed assets (excluding budgetary investment) in the district; the size of investment (including capital investment) made by zone residents in the special economic zone of the tourism cluster located in the North Caucasus Federal District, the Krasnodar Territory and Adygeya (hereinafter referred to as the tourism cluster); the number of jobs created by residents of the special economic zones of the tourism cluster; the number of projects implemented to convert defence enterprises to civilian production.
In accordance with the Strategy of Innovative Development of the Russian Federation until 2020, several projects have been incorporated in the North Caucasus development programme designed to encourage the district’s regions to develop the economy and to improve the operation and growth of the pivots of innovation-driven economic development and to bridge the social development gap by building education, healthcare and social protection facilities. Other plans include the development, introduction and support of an integrated system of information and monitoring of investment activity in the district, as well as the development of the tourism cluster, where new centres of economic growth should be created with due regard for the competitive tourism and recreation advantages of the North Caucasus Federal District and measures of state support for the district’s investment development and cooperation with the district’s development institutions.
The programme is to be implemented in 2013-2025.
Stage I (inceptive, 2013-2015) was scheduled to coincide with the three-year budgetary plan for 2013-2015.
Stage II (basic) will be carried out in 2016-2020.
Stage III (contingent) will start in 2021 and end in 2025.
Federal budgetary allocations in 2013-2020 are stipulated at 234.9 billion roubles, including 221.7 billion roubles of expenditure commitments and 13.2 billion roubles of additional funding (as per Protocol No. 6 of the meeting of the Government Commission on the Socioeconomic Development of the North Caucasus Federal District held on 2 October 2012).
The estimate forecast of the financial resources of the regions’ consolidated budgets and extra-budgetary funds amounts to 16.3 billion roubles of allocations from the regions’ consolidated budgets and 2.28 trillion roubles from extra-budgetary funds (as of 2025).
The main expected outcomes of this programme to develop the economy of the North Caucasus Federal District and to modernise the social sector of the district’s regions are as follows:
- stronger social, economic and political security in the region and smooth, balanced socioeconomic development of the North Caucasus Federal District;
- considerable improvement of the investment environment, including for foreign investors, and the creation of new centres of economic growth in the priority industries of the North Caucasus Federal District;
- modernised social infrastructure, including the education system, healthcare and the housing sector, as the basis for a major improvement of the quality of life in the district.