Revisiting the conditions and prerequisites for the implementation of municipal-private partnership in single-industry towns in Russia

The presence of specific factors such as a territory, low settlement density and regions’ inequality raises one of the urgent problems for the Russian state - the development of single-industry towns amid coordinated and progressive infrastructure renewal. Currently, there are priority projects and programs at the federal level in construction and reconstruction of infrastructure facilities in single-industry towns. Their implementation requires significant capital investment and is currently carried out mainly at the expense of public funds. Amid limited budget funding there is a need for private investment, attracting which is possible under the terms of municipal-private partnership. The establishment of state legal framework for the formation and functioning of municipal-private partnership suggests that this institution can become one of the promising tools for the development of urban economy. In our view, the issue of how to use this tool in resource and single-industry towns is not sufficiently covered in literature. In this regard, the purpose of the article is to study the conditions and prerequisites for the implementation of mechanism of municipal-private partnership as a factor in the development of single-industry towns in Russia. To achieve this goal, the authors conducted a case study of Krasnouralsk with OAO Svyatogor being the city-forming enterprise. As a result of the research conducted with the use of general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, the authors concluded that the development of municipal-private partnership in Russian single-industry towns is hampered by factors such as limited extra-budgetary funding, long payback period of projects, underdeveloped regulatory framework. The area for further research is the study of conditions and prerequisites for the implementation of municipal-private partnership in other single-industry towns in Russia. The results can be useful for the representatives of the scientific community, public authorities, and analytical centers engaged in research in the development of municipal-private partnership.