Prospects for Ingushetia: view by its head. Part 2

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov: “Minor tourist enterprises will be secured and serviced by local clans”

The head of Ingushetia ordered local TV-companies to show excerpts from movies about the fictional conman Ostap Bender over the course of a month. Such a creative approach to fighting fraud and bribery was initiated by Yunus-Bek Yevkurov after a criminal case was initiated against Ruslan Yevkurov in Ingushetia. He arrived in the village of Dolakovo, presented himself as a member of the economic ministry of the republic and a cousin of the head of Ingushetia and gathered 5 million rubles from residents of the village, for which he promised support in getting grants within the small business development program. The head of the republic admitted that the fraudster is a distant relative of his, but he doesn’t know him. At the same time, Yevkurov said that financial frauds by relatives of top officials are not rare in Ingushetia.

Soon after the scandal Yunus-Bek Yevkurov visited Moscow and told journalists that, together with government support (more than 90 million rubles), about 150-200 million rubles are available for the support of small and medium-sized enterprises. However, inspections show the KPI appears to be rather low. The head of the republic went to regions to see for himself and meet people doing various jobs, and he asked them how much the government supports them. Out of ten people not one received any government support. “I have created a commission and we started to check who receives it. It has eliminated a total failure. The Prosecutor's Office is at the moment dealing with it and I hope we will open a case for it and force the ones who illegally got this money to return it to the republic's budget,” Yevkurov said.

Ingushetia developed a special program for the internet and printed media resources, with the phrase "What can a young man count for?" It highlights spheres of activity for small entrepreneurs. Many people coming to the business incubator did not know what to do generally. They were taught there and counseled. Many came with prepared projects and thought highly of them.

Moreover, the commission has composed lists of everyone willing to receive it, we've conducted a triple inspection with the municipal education departments, the Ministry of the Economy and the government with the active participation of the law enforcement bodies to prevent this money from being embezzled. That inspection showed something, which forced us to stop the process – out of 326 small and medium-scale entrepreneurs who were presented for my approval, in the course of inspection, one in ten were ill-informed on the subject. The current stage of the support program will give a good impulse to the development of small businesses.

Speaking about relations with the neighboring Caucasus republics, Yevkurov said that historically Ingushetia has very brotherly and good-neighborly relations with the Georgian people. The leading dancers, trainers and choreographers are from Georgia. The head of the republic expressed special gratitude to the Ministry of Culture of Georgia for accommodating Ingushetia. From 1975 at the museum in Telavi, Georgia had fragments of Tkhaba-Yerda, a temple dating from the 7th to the 9th century, one of the oldest Orthodox temples of Russia.

Concerning neighboring areas of the region in the field of the economy, more than 80 percent of building materials are integrated among Chechnya, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia. “Regarding healthcare and education, when we have serious operations our doctors invite their colleagues from North Ossetia and have consultations. North Ossetia and Chechnya do the same. At the same time, sanatoria and resorts, which are in great shape in Chechnya at the moment, are frequented by our citizens, who also want to get some treatment and relax. Since we launched tomography machines, I have just seen them myself, we have a lot of people queuing from North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Chechnya for a medical consultation, because we have more advanced technologies and better quality,” Yevkurov emphasized.
 
Yevkurov said that socio-economic development should be implemented together with providing security, and touched on tourism issues.“I would like to say that our region is the most promising regarding security. We intentionally made it a separated area. The laws of the Russian Federation do not prohibit, but welcome the development of tourism in these areas. Of course we tried to maximally minimize any risks to security. It is an absolutely closed zone, you can enter it only with passes. The Tourism Committee or tourist firms will solve these questions with the border police, as well as any other immediate issues. Moreover, apart from the law enforcement bodies we will employ volunteer groups who take security of their native areas very seriously. These complex measures, I will not focus on details such as eliminations, arrests and other special operations which we sometimes organize, will allow us to minimize risks in the sphere of security,” Yevkurov said.