Victor Zhurba: one-factory towns should be developed, having solved the economy diversification task

Yesterday Igor Shuvalov held a meeting on approaches to the priority "One-factory towns" direction project offer forming.

Approaches to the project implementation of the one-factory towns complex development included into the list of the priority directions by Council under the President of the Russian Federation for strategic development and priority projects were discussed at the meeting.

The vice-chairman of Vnesheconombank, the project manager "Complex development of one-factory towns" Irina Makiyeva provided offers on target parameters in the sphere of labor market, investment attraction, quality of urban environment in one-factory towns.

Taking into account these parameters in each separately taken one-factory town support measures will be also developed. As Igor Shuvalov reported, target parameters on the Complex Development of one-factory towns project are planned to be considered and approved in the fall at the meeting of the Council presidium for strategic development and priority projects under the President of the Russian Federation.

Coordination of the priority project “One-factory towns” with other priority projects, such as small business, export, mortgage, housing and public utilities and urban environment were also discussed at the meeting.

The first Deputy Prime Minister, in particular, marked the need of joint operation of linear one-factory towns with mayors, management teams and the most active citizens of one-factory towns. "Five steps of daily life improvement", the offer of projects on urban environment implementation developed by KB "Strelka" was also approved.

The expert of Regions Development Center, Victor Zhurba, the CEO of KPI Holding commented on the subject of one-factory towns problem resolution:
- There are several basic moments concerning the future of one-factory towns. First of all, they are the cities which were created in places of mineral deposits, but these fields are exhausted, and there are practically no people there, many left long ago, and these cities became absolutely depressive.

Therefore there is no sense to spend any budgetary funds for such cities. At the same time there are regions experiencing the shortage of workforce in the Russian Federation, they are first of all the Far East and the Crimea. And, probably, here it is worth paying attention to creation of programs for resettlement of the population from such depressive cities to the new territories, to regions which are of priority development. For example, in the Far East there is a territory of the advancing development, a large number of workplaces is created there and inflow of fresh force is required. From the point of view of unnatural migration which is stimulated with the state - it would be an interesting course.

One factory towns should be developed not according to the scenario as the Government did before, investing large sums, and it is necessary to solve the problem on the economy diversification in this one-factory town. Today this problem could be solved by the Fund of one-factory towns. This Fund allows to attract investments into one factory town economy. Now we see a flow of requests from these one factory towns. There are potential investment projects which create new workplaces which are ready to diversify one factory town economy rather well.

Especially I would like to mark the will of local government. In fact, it turned out that city authorities promoted that their city was included in the so-called list of one-factory towns to get some future advantages from the state. And after they achieved inclusion in such list not all authorities began to use it comfortably.

They considered that it is a chance to use the government assistance and to distance themselves from the problem resolution a little. Therefore we consider that these one-factory towns authorities have to establish special criteria of performance parameter on the one-factory economy diversification. The criteria are the level of unemployment, amount of the investments involved, quantity of the created workplaces, outflow of the population – such a parameter which will transfer the situation in general in the subjects. It is possible to do a lot of things, but if people continue to leave the one-factory town, so the policy of the city management is inefficient.

Therefore if we are going to solve the problem of one-factory towns development, first of all, it is necessary to speak about responsibility of mayors of these cities, about active actions of the federal authorities to such cities which have a great desire to be engaged in the development. Investors are always ready to come to those cities where the salary level will be rather low, level of employment is low, and the population still has professionalism, - Victor Zhurba marks.

Source: Regions Development Center