Public-private partnership as a tool for development of social sphere of the region (the Republic of Komi case study)
Importance The article considers the issues of social component development as one of the basic directions of government authorities' activity at all levels. We emphasize that the need for the social infrastructure development in the Russian regions considerably exceeds the capacity of their financing at the expense of regional budgetary funds. Therefore, cooperation with business entities through an active implementation of public-private partnership mechanism may become an effective tool for the development pace acceleration of social infrastructure with reasonable budgetary expenditures for these kind of activities. Objectives The article's goal is to study the application of public-private partnership aspects as an instrument for the region's social development. Methods Based on an analysis of the existing procedure for forming the List of public-private partnership projects in the Republic of Komi, which acts as planning instrument in this area, the paper makes evaluation of the current situation in this area using structural analysis methods, and also evaluation of documents and comparative analysis. The article defines constraints, which hamper obtaining of maximum useful results after introducing public-private partnership to the economic practices at the particular region-level, as well as, to reflect possible directions of the influence aimed at changing the situation. Results The paper identifies the main problems, which occur in the region and which include project structuring at the State-level organizations and low attractiveness of regional projects for the potential partners. Conclusions and Relevance We identify the main sectors of social sphere activity, which plan to use this mechanism in order to improve the accessibility of social benefits for the region's population. The obtained results can be used when developing the growth strategies of the regions' social services.