Assessment of potential of import substitution of agro-industrial complex of the southern federal district

The implementation of projects on import substitution leads to structural reconstruction of the national economic system, regional social and economic complexes, as well as to the changes in the inter-sectoral proportions. The import-substituting potential of the industry is the combination of its systematic, qualitative and quantitative parameters influencing not only its sustainability, security and balanced character but also the competitive ability of the import-substituting production of goods in the scale complied with the strategic goals of the regional development. At the same time, the import-substituting potential of the regional agro-industrial complex (AIC) is determined not only by its opportunities (resources, infrastructure, etc.), but also by the efficiency of the administrative influence focused on the achievement of strategic results. Assessing the import-substituting potential of the agriculture, the authors differentiate the resource, environmental, organizational, managerial and result components, which determine not only the opportunity of the implementation of the import-substituting potential but also the compliance of the obtained results with the goals of the regional development. In the article the step by step algorithm of the research of the import-substituting potential of the industry is presented. The tools of the problem focused assessment of the import replacing potential of the agriculture and their practical approval (on the example of the Southern regions of Russia) are developed. The application of the problem focused approach to the assessment of the import-substituting potential of the agriculture in the regions of the Southern federal district allowed, firstly, to find the factors catalyzing and inhibiting the potential of the agriculture in the regions of the Southern federal district and under the conditions of the permanent foreign sanctions, other exogenous and endogenous risks, and secondly, it allowed finding “narrow places” in the implementation of the import-substituting potential. Among the basic analyzed factors inhibiting the process of the import substitution in the agriculture of the South of Russia are the following: the lack of well trained stuff, high depreciation of the capital assets, insufficient volume of investments, unbalanced character of the development of various sectors of agriculture which demonstrate different growth rates and use of various technologies which reduces the efficiency of the collaboration between the relative and supporting sectors of the agriculture.