К вопросу об оценке государственной политики по развитию Дальнего Востока России

Abstract

A brief overview of the evolution of the new public policy for the development of the Russian Far East is presented. Thanks to active federal policy, the Far East macroregion became a testing ground for new mechanisms and instruments of regional development aimed at stimulating economic growth and promoting private investment. Currently, there is no other macroregion in Russia within which all the possible investment promotion policy tools and measures are in operation. An inventory of budget expenditures (including shortfalls in income) relating to the implementation of measures to stimulate economic growth and promote private investments in the Far East of Russia is conducted. The direct results of the implemented policy (the volume of attracted investments, the number of jobs created, the volume of tax payments) are summarized. Although it is still premature to talk about the high budgetary efficiency of preferential regimes in the Far East of Russia, there is a widespread opinion among the official circles about the uniqueness of the created system for supporting the investment process. This view is primarily based on the high value of the private to public investments ratio pertaining to preferential regimes in Russia’s Far East. A comparative analysis of the performance of the key macro-indicators of the Far East economy and those of the rest of the Russian Federation is carried out for two comparable periods: five years before and five years from the beginning of the implementation of the federal policy. It is concluded that the active policy of creating favourable conditions for investment in the Russian Far East is not yet transformed into the desired pace of the socio-economic dynamics. Such a dissonance with optimistic assessments of the implemented measures and instruments introduced for the development of the macroregion prompts the question of whether the goals of public policy for the development of the Far East are consistent with the means used to achieve them. The starting point for finding an answer to this question is the difference in understanding the content of the categories ‘growth’ and ‘development’