Problem aspects of forming and development of united territorial communities in Carpathian region

Abstract

The paper provides the analytic research of forming of united territorial communities (UTCs) in the regions of Carpathian region (Transcarpathian, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv and Chernivtsi regions). The author reveals the peculiarity of united communities in the region – the composition of UTCs includes the settlements that the Law of Ukraine “On the status of mountain settlements in Ukraine” regards as the mountain ones and border communities. Correspondence of the formed UTCs of the region to the criteria of capable territorial communities (number of population, share of basic subsidy, expenditures on managerial aparatus) defined by the Ministry of Regional Development, housing and construction of Ukraine are analyzed and compared to average rates in Ukrainian UTCs. The relevant conclusions are made. Special attention is paid to the impact of the region’s socio-economic development on the peculiarities of forming of UTCs’ internal capacity. The author finds the dependence of the revenues to UTCs’ budgets on the level of their economic development and availability of entrepreneurship structures on their territories. The absence of dependence between personal income per capita in an UTC and its population number is explained based on conducted ranging. The level of socio-economic development of urban and rural united communities is examined. The research proves the presence of substantially lower rates of rural communities’ budget profitability per capita than in urban UTCs due to comparatively high level of cities’ development and their positioning as economic growth centers. Based on the revealed differences in the levels of financial capacity of UTCs that comprise mountain settlements and other united communities in the region and Ukraine in general as well as urban and rural UTCs the author conducts the analysis of the structure of own revenues across the defined groups. The first case reveals the higher share of individual tax and single tax in own budget revenues and insignificant share of revenues from excise and land taxes. The result can be explained by the specifics of territorial location and geographic peculiarities of such communities. Analysis of the features of forming and development of UTCs in Carpathian region contributed to revealing the smaller average area of an UTC in the region compared to the average rate in Ukraine, lack of UTCs’ correlative land resource that is one of the major community assets and the lower rate of individual tax revenues than average in Ukraine testifying to the low level of communities’ economy development.