Measures of institutional support for the milk product cluster development in the Saratov oblast

Despite the fact that there are various studies devoted to cluster formation in the Russian economy, many methodological and practical issues have not yet been resolved. The mechanism to integrate clusters into the practice of the current state regulation system is not defined clearly and the methodological approaches to cluster infrastructure organization are not worked out; this is especially important and very much in demand in terms of the Russian agricultural development policy. The need to address these issues has led to choosing the research topic and setting objectives. The purpose of the article is to substantiate recommendations for the creation of a three-tier system of institutional support for clustering processes. The study presents methodological and practical recommendations for improving activities of the multifunctional center for state and municipal services provision to form and develop clusters in the framework of regional agricultural policy based on the promotion of effective cooperation between their participants and the state. As a rule, the works devoted to agroindustrial clusters formation discuss two levels of organizational support measures and do not consider changes in the structure and mechanism of state bodies, thus the proposed three-tier tool meets a novelty criteria of the study. The main idea of the article is to create a new cluster infrastructure institute in the form of a department for cluster development and support at the multifunctional center for promoting the formation of competitive agroindustrial regional clusters. Methods of comparative analysis, monographic, system and statistical are used to realize the study purpose. The article concludes that the proposal to set up a department for cluster development in the structure of the Saratov Oblast Multifunctional Center will help to lower administrative barriers to cluster cooperation, improve support of intra- and intercluster interactions, and eliminate institutional barriers to economic growth in the framework of cluster policy. Further development of the theory and method of forming organizational infrastructure to support agro-industrial clusters is a prospect of the research.