Experts claim ineffectiveness of administrative control over economic needs of Northern Caucasus

The new Ministry for Development of Northern Caucasus is to establish common rules of game for Caucasian specific environment. This was emphasized by Denis Sokolov, General Director of the Caucasus Centre for Project Designs, when he was commenting on the decision of Russian President Vladimir Putin to establish a new institution within the Russian government.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on May 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the creation of the Ministry for Development of Northern Caucasus within the government of the Russian Federation. The new Ministry is headed by Lev Kuznetsov, ex-Governor of the KrasnoyarskTerritory.

The activities of the new Ministry will simplify and accelerate a number of bureaucratic procedures. "Perhaps, the Ministry allows concentrating the power and administration in Moscow significantly," Denis Sokolov believes.

In his turn, Magomed Magomedov, a Dagestani analyst, an observer of the newspaper "Chernovik" (Draft), believes the very fact of the creation of the Ministry means recognition of ineffectiveness of the federal agencies that used to supervise the economy of Northern Caucasus.

"In my subjective opinion, the creation of such a Ministry means that the existing agencies, including the Ministry for Regional Development, the Plenipotentiary Envoy's Office, partly the Russian Federation Audit Chamber, and other financial and budgetary agencies, have failed to completely master the task entrusted to them for the control over significant budget spending," Magomed Magomedov believes.

Irina Starodubrovskaya, Candidate of Economic Sciences, the leader of the scientific research "Political Economy and Regional Development", of the Economic Policy Institute named after Yegor Gaidar, treats as counterproductive measures the logic of strengthening administrative control and attempts to find bureaucratic solutions to solve economic problems.

"It seems to me that in the current situation, the creation of such institutions is not very effective, since they start to compete with each other. In the situation, where we have the Ministry and the Plenipotentiary Envoy's Office, we will face increasing competition for functionality and for resources. And, instead of establishing more order within the system, it usually throws the system into even greater lack of proper control," the economist emphasizes.