Express analysis of the condition of the economic complex of an old industrial region

About 40 % of the Russian regions are classified as old industrial ones, where due to a fragmentary character of the government regional policy in the 1990s, the main investment resources were concentrated in the enterprises of the old city forming industries that hindered the innovative development of these regions contrasted to their technological backwardness. That’s why in the age when the industrial challenges emerge, the economic complexes of these regions are subject to risks, first of all, due to the threats and challenges connected with an intensive dynamics of the changes of exogenous and endogenous factors of the competitiveness of the production of basic industries. The economy of old industrial regions is apt to depressions together with the deficit of financial resources, inefficient reforms, absence of relevant plants of the reindustrialization. In this connection, a quick analysis of the beginning of stagnation and depression plays a very important role. We suggest and test the methodology of an express analysis of the condition of the economic complex based on the calculation of an integral indicator, which takes into account the main industrial coefficients (labour productivity, efficiency of use of the fixed assets, intensity of the renovation of machines and equipment, dynamics of the fixed assets renovation, share of the investments into the gross regional products, investments into fixed capital and budgetary efficiency of fixed assets use), which allows for quick identification of the beginning of the stagnation and reducing the time lag between the problem perception and the correction of the regional economic policy. The regions of the Southern Federal District have been used as the example of old industrial regions. In order to solve the problem of a depressive situation in a number of old industrial regions, an integrated State program for the efficient replacement in the old dominating industries of old enterprises by new modern plants within the national structural and industrial policy is indispensable. The leading role in their transformation is played with the modernization of the investment system, which fixes oan inertial scenario of the development, as well as its efficient replacement and efficient reindustrialization of the regional economic complex.