Normal market processes to be created in NCFD

Possibility of allocation of additional non-budgetary funds to the North Caucasus Federal District is not high- The issues of social mobility and unemployment, especially among the youth, were brought up again during the visit of Vladimir Putin to North Caucasus and his meeting with regional ‘United Russia’ organization’s members. Could that mean that a new strategy for solving these problems is being worked out?

- To a certain degree, yes. The statement of our Prime Minister could be regarded as an attempt to work out a systematic approach to this hard task. It implies not only the use of budgetary funds, but also the help of medium and big enterprises. That means the combination of administrative recourses and creation of favorable conditions for business. The situation on North Caucasus has considerably improved since last year, when armed bands of militants were extremely active, so the problem of unemployment can be regarded as a key issue of the social security in the region. This is a top problem and it is being treated on all administrative levels, from federal to regional.
In this regard Mr Khloponin will perform the functions at which he’s at his best - he will coordinate all the projects and activities, and that gives a certain guarantee of their success. Will of Prime Minister, Mr Khloponin’s aptitude and positive changes in the situation on North Caucasus might give a way to purely peaceful questions, and the youth unemployment is the first of them.

- It is not a secret that one of the main North Caucasus’ problems is that the investments do not always reach their addressees. Could we hope that this time the whole project won’t end up in some sort of money laundering by local functionaries?

- I think that the struggle with corruption is especially urgent in North Caucasian region, if we take the very tone of the recent meeting in Kremlin in account. The corrupt practices on North Caucasus are interwoven with regional criminal clans, and that fact contributes to conglomeration of local problems and makes the situation even more complicated. Therefor struggling against corruption without changing the inner relations’ system of North Caucasian society itself is pointless, because we will be dealing with the effect, but not the cause. However the Vice-Premier’s way of starting the work on cleaning the corruption away from governing structures, starting with his own staff, may indicate that the money (and the sum in question is considerable) can still reach its destination. On the other hand, in my opinion the possibility of additional non-budgetary founds allocation to the region’s economy is not high enough. There are some enterprises in Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia that could be regarded as the resource for work places for several thousand citizens of these Republics. But the whole affair risks becoming a sort of ‘Potemkin village’, a broadsheet, demonstrating the success of governmental anti-crisis measures to other countries, while being totally ineffective by itself, unable to ameliorate the socio-economic situation on the North Caucasus.
My colleagues from Ingushetia and Dagestan cited several instances of such enterprises, that existed even in the pre-war period (canned food factories, construction materials production) and now are due to be revived. But there is no real demand for that sort of production in the region as the buying power of population is not very high. We should try to understand who will be the consumer of a canned food factory’s production, to recreate the whole succession of production and consumption. Of course, the solution for this problem could be obtained by administrative leverage, but the main idea is to create a normally functioning market economy in the region. That goal could be attained not by extra investments, but by the change in businessmen’s psychology, by connecting the economy of North Caucasus to the other Russian districts’. So this is much more a matter of time than of money.

- The entrance exams to the most part of Russian institutes of higher education are coming to an end now. MSU and some other Institutes have introduced additional tests. Is there any data on the number of university entrants from North Caucasus? Isn’t the higher education a way to increase the level of social mobility in the region (and that is also one of the most important tasks)?

- Thou I can’t yet present any statistical data, the situation seems to be alarming. This year the number of competition participants is three times less than last year on some MSU faculties due to the demographic situation. And these figures are disastrous, and students from North Caucasus do not seem to improve the picture. I understand completely the implication of your question and I can tell that all institutes are glad to accept each and every student, no matter how high their schooling level is. And the Unified State Exam’s results show extremely low level in the humanities. But now it is not yet the time to summarize and we will be able to evaluate the scale of school education’s disaster (even if it is caused by objective reasons) only in September.
VK