Crimea shakes up economists

By Vestnik Kavkaza

Crimea will be the main topic of the Moscow Economic Forum which starts on March 26th. The co-chairman of the forum, president of the New Cooperation Industrial Union Konstantin Babkin, promises to form a group of people who are able to develop a clear concept; a clear set of solutions for taking Russia from the economic crisis. “Russia is pregnant with a new economic way of development and new ideas. When new positive ideas conquer the general population, the ideas become a material force. The reason for the Ukrainian crisis is economy. Ukrainian governments which replaced each other, like it used to be in Russia, didn’t pay attention to industries and new jobs were not a priority. A country which doesn’t develop slightly economically degrades. In Ukraine we can see that it turned to a deep economic and social crisis. So, the idea of supporting Russian policy will be voiced at the MEF; we will demand that our government play a more active role in the crisis, as all these phenomena are taking place close to our borders, in the Russian world, and it is not alien to Russia.”

Mikhail Delyagin, Director of the Institute for Problems of Globalization, who often criticizes the economic policy of Russia thinks that “there are no unsolvable problems, but there are also no problems which are solved by themselves. So, one of our first visitors was Putin’s economic aid, Andrey Belousiv, our best macroeconomist. I hope the work is being done. Let’s not forget that Crimea earns not due to social benefits or pensions but due to tourists. 90 billion rubles annual investments to the social sphere and infrastructure, which has been calculated, do not consider that we will have to help business in Crimea for people live normally, if the tourist season fails.”

Delyagin sees three variants of the development of the economic situation in Crimea. The first option. We take modern Russia with its disadvantages, oligarchs, raiders and transfer it to Crimea. In a years time everybody will look at this and says: “Why did you do that?” And we won't be able to answer the question.

The second option. We make a shop-window out of Crimea, like Saakshvili made out of Georgian villages in South Ossetia.

The third option. We make Crimea a center of profit. The current investments should be oriented at profitability. When Egypt is shutting down, when Sochi is too expensive, there is an opportunity to earn money at Crimean resorts. Crimea could be a breadbasket of Russia. We could create a sample of future Russia in Crimea, including high-tech progress. In Crimea there are no things which prevent development in Russia – awful monopolies and bureaucracy. There are Ukrainian sins, but we can combine positive things of the Ukrainian model with our positive moments and create a copy of modern Russia. We can test the model of future Russia and spread it all over the country.