elcome to the website for mining towns in Russia. This site provides a dedicated resource to support the economic development of these towns.

There are six main areas to the site:

The Tacis MERIT-1 project has been working to help tackle the human and social problems caused by the restructuring of the coal industry. MERIT-1 has worked in towns in a number of coal mining towns across Russia.

Municipalities have a key role in local economic development, being responsible for many aspects of encouraging and regulating business. They can also create the right conditions for industry to flourish. It is therefore vital that the professional staff in municipalities have the knowledge, skills and creativity to manage the development process. A range of materials and tools have been developed and tested through the Municipal, Economic and Social Reform Initiative of Tacis (MERIT-1) project. These materials and tools are available here.

Every municipality needs to support and encourage new and small business development. Under the MERIT-1 project a wide range of resources and materials were created and utilised to assist municipalities develop their services to SMEs. These can be accessed here.

Mining towns are crying out for new investment. The challenge is to link good investment projects with potential investors. Municipalities need to develop strategies for targeting inward investment and also to support the development of professional Business Plans for investment opportunities. Guidelines on these two aspects of development are provided here.

Many economic initiatives require substantial funding and it is clear that municipalities cannot afford to undertake all of the projects they want to implement. There will therefore be a need to align strategies for development to the availability of resources to implement them. Information about major international donors, as well as information about bilateral assistance, private sector investors and sources of finance from within the Russian Federation can be accessed here.

The municipal support provided by Merit 1 envisaged a combination of technical assistance in the Strategic Plans development and training in strategic planning for municipal staff, technical co-ordinators, working group members and also for the staff of the Business Development Centres established within the project. Furthermore, over 800 SME representatives in the five towns received training within the project in various aspects of business. Specialised training packs were prepared to secure a unified approach to training. These materials are available here.