In 2017 Joint-Stock Company Northern Caucasus Resorts will attract about 2.5 billion rubles of private investments to special economic zones within the North Caucasus tourism cluster. The corresponding performance indicator of the management company is fixed in the plans of JSC NCR for the current year. The funds will be invested by new residents of SEZ of tourist recreational type.

‘The work on attraction of residents to special economic zones created under the project of the North Caucasus tourism cluster is one of the main challenges allotted by the Government of Russia to  Joint-Stock Company Northern Caucasus Resorts as the project management company. This is a very time consuming and laborious process with a lot of nuances. Therefore we extensively focus on support of potential residents coordinating their work from the moment of having the idea to construct commercial facilities at our resorts to the stage of submission of their application to the Expert Council of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation. And then, within arrangement of connection of residents to engineering infrastructure, making the general operational decisions, marketing promotion of their services, etc.,’ noted Oleg Gorchev, the Director General of JSC NCR.

He also added that at the moment, with the support of the company’s investment specialists, the applications of four potential residents have been processed and will be submitted in February to the Expert Council for special economic zones at the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation for its consideration. Besides, the updated business plans of already operating residents which stipulate additional financing and extension of applications by means of including new accommodation facilities and guest service facilities will be considered.

‘For example, the company Grand-Arkhyz, that had previously planned to invest in its project about 800 mln rubles, after concluding an agreement with the Holiday Inn hotel network will bring its facility in compliance with the network standards which will lead to increase of the investment amount by 80%,’ said Oleg Gorchev. ‘I would like to note that the work according to the standards of the international network was the resident’s own idea which we readily supported,’ he added. Another resident, according to the Head of Joint-Stock Company Northern Caucasus Resorts, near the hotel complex scheduled to be put into operation as early as by 2017/2018 season, is also considering the possibility to construct the apartment hotel increasing its investments in Arkhyz SEZ by 250 mln rubles.

‘The emergence of new residents and revision of investment budgets upwards by the investors already operating in SEZ demonstrates their confidence in successful development of the tourism cluster project. Our partners see the tourist flow growing from year to year, they know about our plans to ramp up the ski infrastructure and finally they know about feverish demand for the services of accommodation and food facilities. And all this guarantees to our partners the return on their investments, especially that most of them invest not borrowed but their own funds in the project,’ concluded Oleg Gorchev.

We remind that for now there are 25 residents registered in SEZ within the North Caucasus tourism cluster. The total amount of investments declared by them makes up 17.6 billion rubles.

The decision on assigning the status of resident of the special economic zone of tourist recreational type shall be taken by the Expert Council for special economic zones at the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation. It includes the representatives of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, JSC Special Economic Zones, Joint-Stock Company Northern Caucasus Resorts, as well as of the key ski industry organizations.