ID :
14510
Fri, 08/01/2008 - 07:41
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https://oananews.org//node/14510
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Russian govt allocates 120 bln rbls for Chechnya's restoration.
MOSCOW, July 31 (By Itar-Tass World Service writer LyudmilaAlexandrova) - Russian government has allocated 120 billions rubles /USD 1=RUB 23.4/ for the restoration and development of the Chechen Republic, a region that has suffered from two armed conflicts.
The government has endorsed a special-purpose restoration programslated for three years.
Chechnya is the only region of Russia that gets federal subsidies of the size as huge as this one.
"The scale of budgetary funding of the Chechen economy compares only to the allocations that the authorities are to earmark for preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi," the Moscow-based Gazeta daily says.
Experts describe this huge financing as remuneration to the republic for the safeguarding of its internal stability.
The Federal Program for 'Social and Economic Development of theChechen Republic from 2008 through 2011' envisions that the region will get 120.6 billion rubles for development purposes and 110.7 billion rubles of that amount will be remitted from the federal budget.
The government hopes that effectuation of this program will lay the grounds for a transition of the republic to a steady development of the economy and social sphere. It suggests, among other things, that the Gross Regional Product there will total 212.1% in 2012 versus 2007.
"Reaching a growth of 212% in 2012 versus 2007 is quite realistic a prospect," RBC daily said quoting Chechnya's Deputy Prime Minister Ziyad Sabsabi.
"Ever more new foreign and Russian investors come to Chechnya every month and new industrial facilities will be commissioned here soon." According to him, the potential investors are the companies fromCentral Asia and other countries of the CIS, Iran, China, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.
Gazeta writes in this connection it is not yet clear what lures foreign investors find in Chechnya, but the regional president, RamzanKadyrov said earlier he has plans for developing the farming sector and the manufacturing of construction materials.
The newspaper quotes Vyacheslav Glazychev, the chairman of the Russian Public Chamber's commission for regional development and localself-government as saying it is rather difficult to hope for an investment boom in Chechnya.
"A massive inflow of investors is hardly in the cards until thesituation fully calms down there," Glazychev said.
Experts highlight what they think is the political underpinning of large-scale subsidies to Chechnya, namely, the upkeep of internalstability in the region.
"The government is setting up a system of agreements with RamzanKadyrov, who fully controls the situation in Chechya, a fact that spares the federal authorities from the need to overbore themselves with Chechen problems," Alexei Makarkin, a deputy director general of the Center for Political Technologies told RBC daily.
Apart from finance, Moscow has also granted broad powers to the regional authorities. "Thus one of the sides gives the other side the right to govern the republic and gets in exchange the guarantees thateverything will be quiet," Makarkin said.
Along with the lavish allocation of finance, Moscow plans a stringent control over how the monies are used, and the powers to coordinate and exercise this control have been shifted from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade to the Ministry of Regional Development reporting now to the energetic and tough Dmitry Kozak, who has had an experience of fighting for fiscal discipline in the Caucasus.
The program for Chechnya's development is the first document of the kind, under which monies will be allocated for generalized purposes and parameters, like the slashing of unemployment or an increase of private investment.
If the region fails to reach a specified objective, no subsidies will be allocated for this purpose next year.
Funds will also be withdrawn if the Accounting Chamber or theProsecutor General's Office tracks down the assimilation of monies for the purposes that were not specified.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in June the current special-purpose program is radically different from the previous one.
"We had to start literally everything from scratch then and today the situation is different," he said. "Now we're changing over to a step-by-step comprehensive development of the republic, as dozens of thousands of new jobs will be created there in the next four years and the industrial output will double." Besides, Putin specified some other tasks for the years to come - the normalization of the social sphere and transport infrastructures, restoration and rebuilding of the compound of the Chechen State University, the Grozny College of Oil and Gas, the Chechen Teachers Training College, a number of junior technical colleges and industrialapprenticeship school, as well as district hospital, radio and television broadcasting facilities, the republican printing house, and the Grozny airport.
The previous program for Chechnya was titled a program ofrehabilitation of the economy and the social sphere, and it was adopted in the years when the republic's territory interspersed with paramilitary formations underwent air strikes, while the experience of Chechnya's restoration after the conflict of 1994 to 1996 had been gloomy.
Construction works progressed along with bombing raids then and that is why one had a difficulty telling whether this or that building or factory had been ruined before the pumping of dozens of millions of rubles into its restoration, Vremya Novostei says.
Add to this that monies were remitted to the republic via several specially authorized private banks, which had every opportunity to see to it that no one would be the wiser.
Legends circulated around Grozny about 'districts of cloud castles' - the buildings that had been destroyed and then rebuilt in repeated series but that had never existed in reality.
Witnesses say that Chechnya does not look as gloomy nowadays as itlooked some three or four years ago. Today the scenes of a construction boom replace the fences with posters reading 'Don't Shoot, People Working Here'.
"Still, many observers claim that even the restoration of facades would not be possible if Ramzan Kadyrov didn't invest his private money in it and if he waited for disbursements of funds from the federal budget of late," Vremya Novostei writes. "In the meantime, the origins of his money are not to be discussed either in Moscow or in Chechnya."Mikhail Remizov, the director of the Institute of National Strategies, says Ramzan Kadyrov draws on the bulk of his finance form an informal fund named after his father Ahmat Kadyrov that exists on contributions from the Chechen community.
"This model can be assessed as a successful one, since the restoration of Chechnya is supported by own funds and the Chechens are highly disinterested in destroying their own property," Remizov told RBC Daily
The government has endorsed a special-purpose restoration programslated for three years.
Chechnya is the only region of Russia that gets federal subsidies of the size as huge as this one.
"The scale of budgetary funding of the Chechen economy compares only to the allocations that the authorities are to earmark for preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi," the Moscow-based Gazeta daily says.
Experts describe this huge financing as remuneration to the republic for the safeguarding of its internal stability.
The Federal Program for 'Social and Economic Development of theChechen Republic from 2008 through 2011' envisions that the region will get 120.6 billion rubles for development purposes and 110.7 billion rubles of that amount will be remitted from the federal budget.
The government hopes that effectuation of this program will lay the grounds for a transition of the republic to a steady development of the economy and social sphere. It suggests, among other things, that the Gross Regional Product there will total 212.1% in 2012 versus 2007.
"Reaching a growth of 212% in 2012 versus 2007 is quite realistic a prospect," RBC daily said quoting Chechnya's Deputy Prime Minister Ziyad Sabsabi.
"Ever more new foreign and Russian investors come to Chechnya every month and new industrial facilities will be commissioned here soon." According to him, the potential investors are the companies fromCentral Asia and other countries of the CIS, Iran, China, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.
Gazeta writes in this connection it is not yet clear what lures foreign investors find in Chechnya, but the regional president, RamzanKadyrov said earlier he has plans for developing the farming sector and the manufacturing of construction materials.
The newspaper quotes Vyacheslav Glazychev, the chairman of the Russian Public Chamber's commission for regional development and localself-government as saying it is rather difficult to hope for an investment boom in Chechnya.
"A massive inflow of investors is hardly in the cards until thesituation fully calms down there," Glazychev said.
Experts highlight what they think is the political underpinning of large-scale subsidies to Chechnya, namely, the upkeep of internalstability in the region.
"The government is setting up a system of agreements with RamzanKadyrov, who fully controls the situation in Chechya, a fact that spares the federal authorities from the need to overbore themselves with Chechen problems," Alexei Makarkin, a deputy director general of the Center for Political Technologies told RBC daily.
Apart from finance, Moscow has also granted broad powers to the regional authorities. "Thus one of the sides gives the other side the right to govern the republic and gets in exchange the guarantees thateverything will be quiet," Makarkin said.
Along with the lavish allocation of finance, Moscow plans a stringent control over how the monies are used, and the powers to coordinate and exercise this control have been shifted from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade to the Ministry of Regional Development reporting now to the energetic and tough Dmitry Kozak, who has had an experience of fighting for fiscal discipline in the Caucasus.
The program for Chechnya's development is the first document of the kind, under which monies will be allocated for generalized purposes and parameters, like the slashing of unemployment or an increase of private investment.
If the region fails to reach a specified objective, no subsidies will be allocated for this purpose next year.
Funds will also be withdrawn if the Accounting Chamber or theProsecutor General's Office tracks down the assimilation of monies for the purposes that were not specified.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in June the current special-purpose program is radically different from the previous one.
"We had to start literally everything from scratch then and today the situation is different," he said. "Now we're changing over to a step-by-step comprehensive development of the republic, as dozens of thousands of new jobs will be created there in the next four years and the industrial output will double." Besides, Putin specified some other tasks for the years to come - the normalization of the social sphere and transport infrastructures, restoration and rebuilding of the compound of the Chechen State University, the Grozny College of Oil and Gas, the Chechen Teachers Training College, a number of junior technical colleges and industrialapprenticeship school, as well as district hospital, radio and television broadcasting facilities, the republican printing house, and the Grozny airport.
The previous program for Chechnya was titled a program ofrehabilitation of the economy and the social sphere, and it was adopted in the years when the republic's territory interspersed with paramilitary formations underwent air strikes, while the experience of Chechnya's restoration after the conflict of 1994 to 1996 had been gloomy.
Construction works progressed along with bombing raids then and that is why one had a difficulty telling whether this or that building or factory had been ruined before the pumping of dozens of millions of rubles into its restoration, Vremya Novostei says.
Add to this that monies were remitted to the republic via several specially authorized private banks, which had every opportunity to see to it that no one would be the wiser.
Legends circulated around Grozny about 'districts of cloud castles' - the buildings that had been destroyed and then rebuilt in repeated series but that had never existed in reality.
Witnesses say that Chechnya does not look as gloomy nowadays as itlooked some three or four years ago. Today the scenes of a construction boom replace the fences with posters reading 'Don't Shoot, People Working Here'.
"Still, many observers claim that even the restoration of facades would not be possible if Ramzan Kadyrov didn't invest his private money in it and if he waited for disbursements of funds from the federal budget of late," Vremya Novostei writes. "In the meantime, the origins of his money are not to be discussed either in Moscow or in Chechnya."Mikhail Remizov, the director of the Institute of National Strategies, says Ramzan Kadyrov draws on the bulk of his finance form an informal fund named after his father Ahmat Kadyrov that exists on contributions from the Chechen community.
"This model can be assessed as a successful one, since the restoration of Chechnya is supported by own funds and the Chechens are highly disinterested in destroying their own property," Remizov told RBC Daily
