ECONOMIC ACCESSIBILITY OF FOREST RESOURCES: ITS DETERMINING FACTORS AND THE ACCURACY OF THE ESTIMATES
The current low levels of allowable amounts of wood removals (annual allowable cut) are largely predetermined by economic inaccessibility of forest resources. Achievement of the target value of the indicator of the state program of the Russian Federation "Development of Forestry" for 2013-2020 years in terms of forestry is impossible to ensure without the formation of favorable economic conditions for the implementation of logging activities. Economic incentive for development of forest resources is a positive criterion of economic accessibility of forest resources, which is defined by the value or exceeding the value of forest rent standard cost of reproduction, and protection of forests. The affordability of forest resources is affected by the totality of the various factors (resource, logistics, general economic, commercial, institutional) determining the level of prices, costs of production and reproduction of timber forest resources, as well as possible legal restrictions on the development of forests. Based on the results of calculations on cutting area fund of Vilegodsky forest, located in the southeastern part of the Arkhangelsk region, analysis of the impact of such factors as the use of low-quality wood, the level of prices and wages to economic accessibility of forest resources was made. In the absence of processing low-quality wood, proportion of economically inaccessible forests was more than 30 %, at the same time in the organization of pellet production volume of economically inaccessible forests decreased by 44.7 %, while the estimate of economically accessible forest resources increased by 45.3 %. Increase in the price of forest products by 10% leads to a decrease in cost of inaccessible forest resources of Vilegodsky forest for about 50-65 %, reflecting the importance of this factor. The level of wages is also a determining factor for the assessment of the economic accessibility of forest resources. With the growth of the average wage in the lumber from 35 thousand up to 40 thousand rubles per month, assessment of economically accessible forest resources is reduced by more than a third, and the volume and the number of plots of economically accessible forest resources - for more than a quarter.