Small and medium entrepreneurship functioning issues in the context of ensuring the region’s spatial development

The spatial development of Russia's regions continues the trend of localization of the population in large and major cities, while the share of residents of towns and cities and rural areas is decreasing. As a result, there is an aggravated problem of high interregional and intra-territorial inequality, shrinking of resources and growth factors in the centers of economic activity, weak inter-territorial cooperation in the implementation of major production projects, etc. A new Strategy for Spatial Development of the Russian Federation for the period until 2030 with a forecast until 2036 presents the source of growth of medium and small towns and rural settlements, among other things, in promoting the diversification of employment and supporting the proposals and initiatives of the population in the entrepreneurial sphere. This determined the choice of the aim of our article – to identify the problems concerning SME development (case study of the Vologda Region municipalities) in the context of ensuring spatial development of territories. As a result of the study, we have identified the problems in the sphere of measures of state support for small and medium enterprises of local territories, aimed at creating conditions for reducing the level of inter-regional and intra-regional differences. We have found that they are often formal and non-systemic in nature. The analysis of the legal and regulatory framework in this area has revealed the lack of a unified approach in the support measures provided (at the federal and regional levels), which leads to the duplication of a number of implemented projects. We have found that, despite the multiple growth of the volume of support measures, there is a decrease in the number of small and medium businesses in the Vologda Region municipalities. This is due to shortcomings in the organizational, informational and infrastructural components of this process (in particular, low level of availability of various support measures; lack of sites suitable for the organization of production; reduction of the population in rural areas, etc.). The results of our work can be useful to public authorities and local governments in improving the policy of spatial development of territories, implementation of projects to support entrepreneurial initiatives; representatives of enterprises – when choosing forms of support; researchers – when studying similar topics