Problems of increasing the efficiency of state and municipal financial control in the Russian Federation

The article reveals the main causes of low financial control in the Russian Federation. They are of theoretical and methodological, legal and moral character. In modern conditions state and municipal control is a complex category that includes a number of directions. Meanwhile, due to the lack of a common (single) law the Russian financial legislation does not have a clear definition of the notion “state and municipal financial control”. This control should be based on the principles of legality, expediency and efficiency. Unfortunately, these principles are not fully realized in modern Russia. The article proves that internal control is a cornerstone in the hierarchy of state and municipal financial control. It is a set of methods to assess financial activities of individual agencies and businesses. However, it is impossible to ensure its effectiveness without external control. The article gives a detailed analysis of the quality of internal and external control. It presents quantitative indicators of financial control provision in the Vologda Oblast, which reveal its shortcomings, especially in the difficult economic situation in the country and its regions. On the basis of the conducted analysis the author considers the indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of the control work: productivity, effectiveness and efficiency. The article presents the methodology to calculate these criteria indicators. The efficiency of state and municipal financial control is considered as its macroefficiency (a set of the effects got due to control activities) and as intermediate performance of state and municipal financial control bodies’ activity. The accumulated problems should be solved through the development of new conceptual approaches to the formation of the unified system of state and municipal financial control, primarily through the adoption of a special federal law and the application of the relevant legal norms and mechanisms to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of control work at all levels of the authority chain. To ensure effective state and municipal financial control in Russia it is necessary to reject the discredited liberal monetarist course and transfer to the state model of the market economy development.