Evaluating the efficiency of zones with special economic status in Russian regions

Special Economic Zones (SEZ) represent one of the tools of attracting foreign capital, diversifying the economy, shifting the industry to the path of innovative development, supporting the priority sectors, and modernizing the economy as a whole. In order to improve the efficiency of state regulation of SEZ and to make management decisions on amendment of the terms of their operation, the comprehensive assessment of the SEZ by a single integral criterion is necessary. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of the special economic zones in the regions of the Russian Federation. The study found that the procedure for evaluating the efficiency of the SEZ approved by the Russian Government, contains a number of shortcomings that do not allow to formalize the method of determining the integral index of efficiency for a separate zone. The article describes the author's model of integral evaluation of SEZ effectiveness on the basis of calculated values of 27 basic and 4-6 individual (depending on the types of SEZ) parameters. They allow evaluating the efficiency level and conducting the comparative analysis of territories with a special regime of management, taking into account the total activity of resident enterprises as well as management companies. The calculations showed that in general the functioning of SEZ in the Russian regions as a whole, leads to the positive productive results, reflected in the growth of gross regional product, investment and new jobs. However, only four areas of industrial production and technology development can be attributed to effectively functioning SEZ. The other areas revealed the features of inefficiency. The obtained results of the evaluation are necessary for the developing the set of directions of regional economic policy on improving the functioning of the SEZ, as well as justifying the necessity and possibility of creating new areas with special economic status in the Russian regions.