As per reports coming from Intefrax, continuing with its co-financing scheme, the Russian federal government will be awarding $300,580 (equivalent to 10 million rubles) to its federal subject, the Sakha Republic, for the expansion of a group of places that hold tourism potential known as tourism clusters. It is also expected that the managers of this project will be roping in nearly 196 million rubles from the federal government at a later stage of the development of this tourism cluster.
The Sakha Republic was selected by the Federal Tourism Agency as a part of its plan to sponsor 18 regions for the development of tourism clusters. All these 18 regions that also include Sakha will receive funding from the state government under its domestic tourism development project by the year 2018. The whole federal program will cost the government nearly 2 billion rubles.
Severnaya Mozaika located in north Mosaic in the Sakhan Republic will be developed as a tourism cluster. This place can be reached after a 33 kilometer ride from the city center of Yakutsk and is spread over nearly 20 hectare area. The picturesque location will host several restaurants, hotel cottages, downhill ski locations and saunas. Moreover, the key attraction of this tourist cluster would be the presence of houses patterned on habitation styles of the numerous ethnic groups living in this area.
In order to provide all the modern and necessary utilities to its visitors, the clusters have been allocated a 10 million ruble fund from the budget of the federal government. Another 3 million rubles are also expected to be added to this budget plan by the Republican government. According to RIA Novosti, the net cost of the whole project is expected to reach 256 million rubles out of which the federal government is expected to be disbursed by the federal government. However, the infrastructure work of this tourism cluster project is only in its initial stage.
The whole project will be executed only as a public-private enterprise. This means that the costs incurred on utilities and transportation that amounts to 30% of the total project expenses will be covered by the government whereas the remaining 70% will be financed by private investors. What actually happens is that investors get a sublease which can be linked to necessary infrastructure after obtaining the required ownership. 2015 has been set as the expected year when the construction work related to infrastructure should be completed.
There are many other regions also that have been earmarked by the federal government for the development of such tourism clusters. These include Astrakhan, Belgorod, Altai, Tuva, Bashkorostan, Buryatia, Yaroslavl, Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Kostroma, Rostov, Lipetsk, Stavropol, Pskov and Ivanovo.