Caspian coast to become a resort zone

Pavel Martynov, exclusively for VK

The Caspian coast wasn’t very popular with tourists in the Soviet Union. The state was more interested in the development of such resort zones as Sochi, Abkhazia and Adzharia. The Caspian coast wasn’t able to be proud of its developed infrastructures for tourism in comparison with the resorts of the Black Sea coast. Nowadays the idea of spending a holiday on the Russian Caspian coast isn’t welcomed amongst tourists because they are worried about their security.

The government decided to break off this sorrowful tradition and turn tourism into the key branch from the points of view both of economic development and political stabilization, hoping that the creation of resorts on the Caspian seashore will provide hundreds of thousands of people with employment.

When the President of Dagestan, Magomedsalam Magomedov, met Vladimir Putin recently, he demonstrated the project of a new city that it is planned to be built just south of Kaspiysk and to turn it into the core of a development project of the coastal cluster. At the first stage the population of the city will number 150,000, and at the next stages it will amount to half a million.

The project was developed by leading British architecture and construction bureaus, taking into consideration such aspects as environmental conditions, security, logistics and comfort. The new city will be developed in different fields – it will become both a science center and a student campus with the necessary infrastructure for sports and tourism. The second project of creating the Caspian resort zone will be the development of ancient Derbent. However, there are a lot of grave problems with infrastructure in one of the oldest Russian cities – in particular, with electricity and water supply, the road network and the transport system.

Huge investments are needed in order to solve these problems, and Moscow is worried about the probable lack of private financing and with the possibility of a situation in which the federal authorities will be the only investor. The other problem the government is afraid of is the fact that a holiday at these resorts can become quite expensive. It is obvious that the square meter price won’t be lower than on the Black Sea coast of Krasnodar Krai. However, Dagestan authorities affirm that they have already found people interested in these projects, including Dagestan’s oligarchs. Not only “Northern Caucasus Resorts” and “Nafta-Moskva” (which will invest 44 billion rubles on construction of sports facilities, hotels, residential houses and business centers) are expected to invest their funds in the projects. Amongst the potential investors there are also Austrian, French, South Korean and Chinese companies. “Our neighboring regions, the Northern Caucasus republics, would also like to take part in the projects, because there is a seashore in the territory of the Northern Caucasus, and they are ready to create there their health resorts and holiday centers,” Magomedov says.

Amongst the advantages of the region for tourism is the fact (which is considered on the whole as deplorable for Dagestan and for Russia in general) that nowadays there aren’t any exploited sea hydrocarbon fields in the region, so the environmental conditions are ideal there. According to Magomedov, “the licenses permitting exploitation of the fields expired, and now it is possible to offer them for sale. Geological examination and seismic prospecting aren’t completed; nevertheless, there are several prospective territories where it is necessary to determine the point for further examination. But in order to do that it is necessary to have a license”.

As for possible risks concerning the security of potential tourists who will visit the resorts, Makhachkala supposes that it is ready to provide all the guarantees of social security. “At the beginning of the year we worked hard placing supplementary forces and means in the republic and creating special groups. This gives us the result we expect. The situation is under our control; such radical and effective actions are mainly supported by our population, and an absolute majority of the population even supports the radicalization of these measures. No doubt that this work is complex; we carried out parallel actions in the fields of information and ideology. It is well-known that if the young aren’t employed and haven’t got any possibility of getting a good education they become vulnerable to different emissaries and propagandists of harmful radical ideas. That’s why these actions were carried out at schools, universities, amongst the young, in the media and on the Internet. We’ll change the situation,” the President of Dagestan says. The Russian President agrees with him: “If such projects, with the participation of private companies, are realized, they certainly will be interested in peace and social security in the region. That’s obvious. They will control the situation in the region themselves, and the local population will take part in this control more actively.