CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE EXISTING APPROACHES TO THE ANALYSIS OF EFFECTIVENESS OF RUSSIAN SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES

The relevance of the study depends on the objective necessity to stimulate and use actively the domestic sources of the economic growth of the Russian economy. Special economic zones acting as the instrument of the state policy implementation and having the multiplicative effect on the industrial, regional and national economy development are one of these sources. However, the reports of the Accounts Chamber and the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation consider the activities of Russian zones to fail to achieve optimum effect. The authors of the paper made an attempt of critical assessment of the procedure used by the government authorities to make such conclusion. In particular, the authors analyzed the operating performance ratios of Russian zones of all types using the procedure of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation and the Board of the Accounts Chamber. When concluding on the inefficiency, the Board of the Accounts Chamber based on the ratio of invested funds of federal budget, tax and customs privileges provided and the total volume of investments made by the residents and taxes and customs duties paid, not taking into account the efficiency of these funds, as well as their impact on the specified indicators achievement. It is noted that the existing procedure of the Ministry of Economic Development does not contain indicators focused on the financial productivity of residents, that is to say, the indicators reflecting the consequences of the project implementation for its direct participants (companies-residents). Moreover, there are no indicators demonstrating the impact on the economy of the region, namely, the aggregate macroeconomic impact of SEZ functioning; as well as on the budget effectiveness, in other words, the identification of budgetary efficiency in the result of the SEZ “project” implementation. The authors make a conclusion about the necessity to improve the existing mechanism of special economic zones management, as well as the revision of the methodology used for assessment of the zones performance.