Key Conclusions
Komsomolsk-on-Amur to evolve as the Far East’s industrial capital
“Komsomolsk-on-Amur has seen a fourfold increase in industrial output,” said Artur Niyazmetov, Russia’s Deputy Minister for the Development of the Russian Far East.
“We launched construction of an engineering school in October 2016. This is a unique facility that has no counterparts in the Russian Federation,” Head of Komsomolsk-on-Amur Andrei Klimov noted.
Komsomolsk-on-Amur improves road conditions
“Road repair funding increased tenfold over the past two years. We repaired 37 road network facilities in the last 24 months,” said Andrei Klimov.
“We have outlined a repair plan for the city’s entire road system in cooperation with the Federal Road Transport Agency. It totals 380 km. This is in order to bring all roads up to standards by 2025. About 11 bln rubles ($191.6 mln) are planned to be spent for this purpose,” Andrei Klimov added.
More funding to carry out the comprehensive development plan for regional cities and towns
“The federal budget has earmarked 5.8 bln rubles ($101 mln) for the comprehensive plan for this year alone,” Andrei Klimov noted.
“The comprehensive plan consists of two large blocks. The first one is the organizational one. It is most probably the most important. Its objective is to support the culture, infrastructure and work capacities of companies… The second portion is for budget investment,” said Dmitry Volkov, Deputy Head of the Government of Khabarovsk Region for the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
Region experiencing job creation and growth in hiring skilled specialists
“We have just recently signed an agreement with the Khabarovsk Region on creating remote jobs at the bank dealing with the support of small and medium enterprises,” said Dmitry Golovanov, Chairman of the Board, SME Bank JSC.
“The first houses and initial infrastructure facilities in the town of Svobodny will appear by 2020. The capacity will continue to increase. It is already growing daily now and new specialists are arriving every day,” said Igor Afanasyev, Chief Executive Officer of Gazprom Pererabotka Blagoveshchensk.
Challenges
Population decline due to low living standards
“We have come up against the problem of migration outflow of the population. Twenty-two percent of the population left Komsomolsk-on-Amur over the last 24 years,” Artur Niyazmetov said.
“What is the town of Svobodny today? The population is less than 54,000. The mood is depressed and the population decline continues. People are dissatisfied with social environment, quality of services, low salaries, lack of jobs or an overall absence of jobs,” Igor Afanasyev noted.
“A city must be convenient for living. Any trip to Komsomolsk-on-Amur nowadays means… three days being stricken from one’s life … We would like regular air routes to reappear, even with Khabarovsk at least. That would be of great help to us,” said Alexei Rakhmanov, President of the United Shipbuilding Corporation
“Retaining human resource potential at each company is among the main challenges. We would like the kind of support, which we are getting from the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East,” Alexei Rakhmanov noted.
Solutions
Shaping a single plan for sustainable urban development
“We created a special institution. It had dealt with other matters before, but now we are reformatting it and it even has an appropriate name – VostokGosPlan [the State Plan for the East]. The objective is to gradually, from small to large things, make a transition to the system of comprehensive management of process,” said Artur Niyazmetov.
“The polarization of the town of Svobodny’s existence must be stopped <…> New urban districts should not contrast with the remaining part of the town <…> The second challenge is to avoid going down the single-industry town path <…> A comfortable environment needs to be created for developing satellite towns and expanding auxiliary and servicing production sectors,” said Marina Dedyushko, Senior Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Amur Region
“We should probably select specific model projects for each territory… and make extra investments into them. This will make it possible for us to attain great advantages in midterm,” added Dmitry Volkov.