Annual international investment forum to open in Sochi

MOSCOW, September 17 (Itar-Tass) - The VIII International Investment
Forum will open in Sochi on Thursday.
"Exhibition pavilions have already been installed," a source at the
forum's technical direction told Itar-Tass.
By tradition, the opening ceremony will be held in the Winter Theatre.
The square around it has the biggest number of pavilions.
A plenary meeting was held under the chairmanship of the Governor of
the Krasnodar territory Alexander Tkachev the day before.
"It's a very good opportunity for our cities and districts to improve
their budgets in crisis conditions. The forum gives a good opportunity to
advertise the region and make contacts, which will surely bring certain
dividends: financial, administrative, political, etc," Tkachev went on to
say.
The Krasnodar territory will present 1,300 investment projects worth
more than 400 billion roubles. For the first time, visitors will be able
to see detailed schemes for the development of the central part of
Krasnodar, an enormous area of the Novorossiisk port, the relay terminals
at maritime ports in Tuapse and the Temryuk region, as well as the mini
copies of future facilities of the Azov-City gambling zone.
An exhibition in the pavilion of the Krasnodar territory will feature
about 60 investment projects in Sochi, of which 17 will be demonstrational
and eight Olympic.
A model of the main Olympic stadium which will host the opening and
closing ceremonies of the 2014 Olympic Games will be central to this
exposition.
For the first time ever Sochi will present vacant lands. The land
allotments have already been formed and included in the regional register
of investment projects. The total sum of Sochi investments may reach 100
billion rubles.
More foreign guests are expected to arrive this year. Applications
have been received from 30 countries. Business delegations, diplomatic
missions and guests from more than 50 regions of Russia are expected to
arrive. The Russian government has granted the forum in Sochi with a
federal status.
The first Sochi forum was held in 2002. In 2007 the forum changed its
name from economic into investment. Last year twelve Russian regions
concluded 66 agreements worth 328 billion roubles.
However, intensive preparations for this year's Sochi forum have been
marred by last year woes, like expensive hotel accommodation.
A delegation of the Russian State Duma will not attend the VIII
International Investment Forum in Sochi, the Russian Black Sea, because of
unreasonably high prices for hotel rooms. The forum will be held on
September 17-20.
Yevgeny Fyodorov, the head of the State Duma Committee for economic
policy and entrepreneurship, told journalists on Wednesday that last year
the deputies had complained to the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service about
high hotel prices in Sochi for the period of the forum. The Anti-Monopoly
considered high prices to be a violation of the existing laws, and ordered
hotel owners to reduce them.
"This year the situation has repeated. Prices at several Sochi hotels
have gone up threefold or fourfold for the time of the investment forum.
"We consider the practice of inflating hotel prices to be absolutely
unjustified and we are not going to encourage the violation of the Russian
legislation by dishonest entrepreneurs," Fyodorov went on to say.
He called for stricter anti-monopoly laws to punish irresponsible
businesses.
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