MOSCOW, July 18 (Itar-Tass) - The absence of low budget airlines and the imperfection of the infrastructure prevents the flow of Russian tourists, who prefer to have holidays inside the country, said Alexander Sirchenko, who is in charge of state tourist projects and tourism security at the Federal Agency for Tourism (Rostourism).

“The lack of budget airlines is a big problem. There is no competition among airlines at the moment. There are monopolists and many low-cost companies withdrew from market,” Sirchenko said. “Unfortunately, it is much cheaper to go aboard for a Russia tourist than to have the rest in his country.”

In addition, he said, “The bad infrastructure and the imperfection of roads prevent the development of the internal tourist flow.” “We collected all proposals from Russian regions to develop air service, river and road transportation. We summed up all data and submitted them to the Culture Ministry,” Sirchenko said.

In his view, “it is impossible to develop tourism without a legal base on these issues.”

For his part, deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee for Social Policy Yuri Smirnov stressed, “In recent times much emphasis is on concentrating the tourist flow in Russia.” “To this end, we approved several laws to create conditions for developing tourism in Russia,” he said.

For example, “Law 296 was approved under which regions are proposed to create conditions for the development of the sector.” Smirnov said, “The federal programme is being realized very actively. A total of 96 billion roubles have been provided from the federal budget and investors should allocate 211 billion roubles.”

“There are many beautiful places in Russia. But often travellers cannot reach them due to bad roads or there are no conditions for the rest,” he said.

Smirnov noted, “A ticket across Russia is very expensive. We realize the need to solve the problem. We’ve prepared a draft law, which will use the default on traffic ticket. This measure should decrease tickets’ price by 15 percent.”