Russian govt plans to boost tourism's contribution to GDP to 10% - Deputy PM Chernyshenko

MOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) - The contribution of the tourism industry to Russia's GDP could be increased from the current 3% to 10%, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko said on Monday.

"We are increasing financing by 20 times and the industry is receiving very serious investment not only from the federal budget, but also from regional budgets. That is essentially a trillion over the 2024 horizon to be invested in the industry. This will allow us to create the infrastructure that all services will be set up for," he said at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

Putin noted that the domestic tourist flow is "growing tremendously in fact," and Chernyshenko emphasized that its structure has changed fundamentally.

"Business trips used to outnumber vacations by a factor of two, now it's the other way around. Recreation has doubled, while business has shrunk for obvious reasons. This is because many tourists, including foreign tourists, traveled to big cities - Moscow, Kazan, and St. Petersburg. It will definitely recover, the most important thing is that we have increased the flow of tourists for recreation and leisure," the deputy prime minister said.

The government is working on expanding the rated room fund in different ways, Chernyshenko said.

"Twenty thousand have been added since last year, the infrastructure is developing, because the government is implementing very strong support measures. These are both preferential loans, and the participation in the core capital, what is most important is the construction of the supporting infrastructure, the very non-refundable heavy investments made by the government. All this has brought industry participants together. There are over 200,000 various companies and they are now contributing more than 3% to GDP. We believe in the forecast that this figure could reach 10%. In any case, it is necessary to strive for this. In those countries where tourism is the backbone of the economy, it contributes up to 10% of GDP," the deputy prime minister said.

Chernyshenko recalled the importance of establishing the Tourism.RF corporation that signed agreements on cooperation with 51 Russian constituent entities that have the potential for tourism development. Seventy-five out of the 600 offered projects were chosen, he said. The total volume of attracted private investment is almost half a trillion rubles, which will allow for obtaining about 25,000 new rooms, mostly those of three and four star levels, in the first pool of projects alone.

In response to Putin's remark that these are "the most in-demand" hotels, the deputy prime minister added that demand is the main criterion for the selection of projects.