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V.Putin: Dear colleagues,

We are here today to discuss tourism and resort- and recreation facilities—matters that concern all and sundry in this country. In a sense, we’ll talk about the nation’s health.

Actually, it is a blend of social, nature conservation and economic issues. This is why we have suggested considering the problem at a State Council presidium session.

In this country there was a resort treatment system wich by far exceeded everything of the kind in other countries. The Black Sea coastline of the Krasnodar Territory and the zone of the Caucasian spas were justly called ‘national health recreation zones’. We all know that this area can boast of an exceptionally rich experience of spa treatment. And it would be an unforgivable extravagance to let this system collapse.

It is not by accident that our session is being held in Gelendzhik which belongs to the recreational area. Not only has this city retained its health resort wealth, it has managed to make it pay off and enrich the local budget.

Unfortunately, such examples are not numerous. The spa business is hardly prosperous in this country; achievements are unspectacular. The worn-out infrastructure of the resort areas is being reconstructed very slowly and conditions for the development of medical and recreational facilities are very poor. All this is due to prevailing monopolistic practices and outdated methods of management, which, for their turn, result in very costly lodging prices and inadequate services. It looks as if there is no place to go on vacation in your own country.

Health recovery and rehabilitation remains a priority for the state which cannot and should not stay away from solving this problem. Therefore the first issue I would like to emphasize is accessibility of spa treatment.

I should say that government responsibilities in this sphere have been clearly delineated and the priority was, I believe, rightly given to children. Spas of different forms of ownership accommodate annually 500,000 kids, with the parents’ fee for the low-income category being not more than ten percent of the cost of the voucher.

The Social Security Fund’s assets are used to buy resort vouchers for those, who lost health on the job. The same for disabled persons of various categories, including the invalids of the Great Patriotic War.

However, most Russian families, and I want to stress it — most Russian families, can not afford the resort treatment and purchase vouchers at full price. Besides, there are many people, who have no opportunity to get resort rehabilitation after serious surgeries.

Today, I hope to hear specific suggestions on how to settle the problem of the resorts’ affordability. We have a lot of local and regional curative resorts. They have their own medicinal approaches and methods, which should be understood, considered and used.

The second direction is enhancing the efficiency and competitiveness of the country’s resort complex.

This work includes several important directions. Among them are establishing up-to-date resort industry, developing its infrastructure, settling the issues of land use and attracting investments, including foreign ones.

A separate issue is the use of budgetary assets in the resort business. There are still no clear-cut criteria of their allocation. There is a pressing need for the thorough development of the budgetary funding system itself. The system that should be understandable, transparent and easily controllable. Financing of the resort business should be done through competitive and focused programs supporting in this way those health resorts that handle the tasks of rehabilitation and specialize in treating serious chronic diseases.

An important issue in developing the resort regions is the fact that (the colleagues working in the regions are aware of it) their nature protection regime does not allow development of the industries contributing substantial revenues to the budget. I know that the working group suggests the idea of developing “special economic zones”. This issue is being discussed in the government. Let us talk about it, surely taking into account the previous mistakes and failures in implementing such approaches.

The next issue is tourism development. Our country possesses huge tourism potential. This potential can by found everywhere: from Kamchatka to Saint Petersburg, from Pskov and Novgorod Veliky to the Krasnodar territory. But this richest historical, cultural and natural potential is used, in experts’ opinion, only by 20%.

As before, tourists coming to Russia follow the customary travelled routes. Besides, their expenses are three times lower than, let’s say, in a European country. They have nothing to spend money on. The infrastructure of rendering services is underdeveloped.

And this is while the common knowledge is that tourism can become the most dynamic branch of economy, and, which is no less important, give a pull to other spheres like transport, communications and service industries. Besides, developing the tourism offers a huge market of new jobs.

I believe that today we have the opportunity to discuss in detail the barriers impeding development of tourism and what should be done to make it an effective component of the Russian economy.

Dear colleagues!

I touched upon only the most important conspicuous aspects. Their range is certainly much wider.