The Ingush government has allocated an additional 6.5 million rubles ($204,000) to speed up the development of the republic's first ski resort, the Ingush president's office said in an emailed statement Friday.
Ingushetia, best known for military checkpoints dotting its border with Chechnya, kidnappings for ransom by armed gangs, and political assassinations, opened its first 1,200-meter-long slope in the Dzheirakh district in March, three months later than originally planned.
But work on the Armkhi resort is falling behind schedule again, Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov told a recent meeting with his aides and investors. The additional funds will be used mostly for land-use research and planning work in the mountainous areas of the republic, he said.
Yevkurov, who himself was the target of an assassination attempt by an Islamist militant four years ago, said that the district has a lot going for it: great mountains, good weather, new roads and restaurants being built, and — an apparent must-have for any serious resort — special military passes are no longer required for travel throughout the district.
The district lies along Ingushetia's southern border with Georgia, a former Soviet republic that Russia fought in a 2008 conflict, and travel had been restricted until a few years ago.
About 200 million rubles ($6.28 million) has already been invested in the Ingush branch of North Caucasus
Resorts, a project that consists of a cluster of resorts from the Black Sea to the Caspian and comes with a special economic zone.
The total cost of the Ingush resorts of Armkhi and Tsori is likely to reach 100 billion rubles, Yevkurov said.
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