MOSCOW, January 30. /ITAR-TASS/. The latest drop in the exchange rate of the Russian ruble against the dollar and the euro will positively influence the increasing flow of Russian tourists to domestic resorts, the head of the Russian Federal Agency for Tourism (Rostourism), Alexander Radkov, told a news conference on Thursday.

“It is clear that this trend could have negative consequences for outbound tourism, but it depends on the character of the ruble’s decline,” he said, adding that depending on the scale of the decline, the demand for foreign trips might decrease given that prices for these tours in rubles would grow.

The minister also noted that in 2014, more than 4.4 billion rubles had been allocated from the federal budget for the development of the tourism industry in Russia.

“Last year, we have implemented a number of projects within the federal target program for development of domestic and inbound tourism,” he said. “This is the construction of 46 facilities providing tourist infrastructure in 22 clusters in 17 Russian territories. Funding allocations from the federal budget totaled more than two billion rubles.”

“This year, there are plans to increase the amount of financing to almost 4.4 billion rubles,” Radkov said, adding also that “investors today actively inject their capital in various tourist projects. In 2013, more than 8 billion rubles was raised from extra-budgetary sources to develop tourist infrastructures”.