Оценка инвестиционного лага в экономике северных субъектов Российской Федерации

Abstract

The inclusion of the zone of the North and the Arctic among the regions critical for the prospective economic development and security of the country implies a significant increase in the volume and, most importantly, the reliability of knowledge regarding the conditions for the use of the main factors of production, in particular investments. A stable hypothesis, which was formed back in the Soviet period, is the presence of a number of features in the North Arctic zone, which turn the conditions for the use of production factors in general and investments in fixed capital in particular into marginal ones. It was an axiom that investments in the northern territories are characterized by significant capital intensity, a long investment cycle, and high riskiness of projects. Although the study of the problems of «stretching» investment cycles, i.e. the lengthening of all phases of the cycle in time, as well as the stability of investment trends, were not as popular as the problem of the «northern appreciation», but the statement that the presence of investment lags causes a relatively low economic efficiency of investment processes, manifested in a delay in obtaining the final effect, seemed indisputable, an increase in the cost of the investment project, an increase in the risk of the formation of «incomplete». In the 2000s, not only the general economic situation and the mechanisms of the functioning of the economy changed significantly, but also technologies both in production and in investment processes. This could not but affect the specific parameters of investment projects, including the comparative conditions for the distribution of investment resources in the territorial aspect. The article attempts to consider the «lag stretching axiom» and the rise in the cost of investment processes in this regard in modern conditions. It is concluded that the hypothesis about the marginal duration of lags for the regions of the North and the Arctic is not supported by both actual data and the results of estimating the length of construction lags (direct methods) and lags for commissioning capacities and investment lags (indirect methods)