By Vestnik Kavkaza
Only 342 days are left ahead of the Sochi Olympic Games. In a year's time, the big event which has been prepared by so many people will be in the past. How will the Olympics influence the economy of the city and the region? Economic experts discuss the problem.
“The preparation for the Olympic Games showed that we still have no developed procedures of getting an important, responsible, and effective result,” Vladimir Klimanov, the senior scientist of the Systemic Analysis Institute of the RAS, thinks. “At the beginning of the preparation to the Games there was a dilemma – whether we buy products and labor force for the preparation to the Olympics or we do it through the state corporation. The second variant was chosen. It enables using maximal efforts for getting a final result. I doubt that we could achieve it if we would follow the law on state purchases, the well-known FL No94 because everybody would get stuck in lawsuits of choosing a supplier without getting complete facilities.”
Klimanov thinks that “today it is pointless to count financial investments into the Olympics. The government excluded the program of allocations to the Games from the list of state programs which will form the state budget. Today it is difficult to define all the arrangements which are included in the preparation of the Olympics. The control bodies are providing necessary control and even extra control, but exact appraisals of this should be made after the end of the event.
We cannot shift February 2014 to some later term. However, the Olympic contract which was signed between Sochi and the IOC contains a lot of demands to Sochi. There are certain demands to taxi drivers, for instance, to the system of food service, the banking service in the city, culture facilities which have to be available for everyone, including disabled people, to pill-peddlers, and other infrastructure service men. Often we ignore this. We are focused on constructing a necessary number of sporting facilities and new hotels. But the city has to change! The future of the country depends on transformation of infrastructure and minor business.”
“We have no goal that all Olympic facilities should pay off right after the end of the Olympics,” Nikolai Novikov, the aide of the Culture Minister of Russia, econbomist, says. “It is impossible. An effect will be seen in a year after the Olympics. For example, the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg wasn’t a tourist undertaking, but the fact of its holding encouraged the growth of tourist inflow even from such a conservative country, from the point of view of abroad tourism, as the USA (by 25%). Americans don’t like to visit other countries at all, but in St.-Petersburg after its 300th anniversary the growth of inflow from America was seen. It’s pointless to mention neighboring European countries. This time the situation is similar. The Games in Sochi are a factor of development of various infrastructure in the city and beyond. They also attract global attention to the city. The Ministry of Resorts and Tourism of the Krasnodar Territory predicts that by 2017 the number of tourists in Sochi will be 13 million people. Is the infrastructure big or small? It is big for Russia. After the Games Sochi will be a well-appointed, interesting, and comfortable city. Even now highway junctions and traffic from the airport to the center of Sochi by aeroexpress are modern.”
“An appraisal of an effect or influence of such arrangements on the city is a very difficult thing because it includes comparison of expenses and benefits. We consider expenses and benefits as a complex, comparing material and social effects,” German Vetrov, the head of the direction “Municipal Economic Development” in the City Economy Institute, says. “The city is gaining capacities: transport, infrastructure, and communications. It is not a settlement of the present problems, but also a foundation for development in the future. Economic development, construction boom, and investment boom lead to improvement of certain indexes of the city. I mean jobs, taxes, increase of the city incomes. Regarding jobs, we have statistics on the cities which have welcomed the Olympics: about 10% of working places remained after the end of the Games. It is a problem because people who come here expect to stay here. The other problem is using the Olympic facilities. The classic variant is transforming them into residential buildings and giving them to universities. Sometimes some facilities are removed, inclusing sporting facilities. Anyway we have to develop a well-though complex program. The Olympics in Munich, Montreal were found financially troubled. There are opposite examples – Barcelona which demonstrated a complex approach, a change of the city economic orientation, it became complex developed. The touristic and business sphere doubled its presence in the city economy after the Olympics. It is a classic of a thoughtful complex approach.”
