Territories of priority social and economic development as an institute of strategic development of single-industry towns (based on the Republic of Tatarstan)

Currently, it is not the export of energy resources or raw materials, but investments, modernization of production and the use of territorial development tools that arise in a number of factors of economic development and become key conditions for the development of the country. This mechanism allows to solve the problems of single- industry towns, one of the problems of which is a narrow specialization and the mono-industrial type of city-forming enterprises. The author substantiates that the task of overcoming the narrow specialization of single-industry entities lies in economic diversification, including through the active use of the territorial development tools, such as federal economic zones, territories of priority social and economic development, industrial and investment sites. To encourage economy the only alternative is state investments and implementation of projects of territorial development. Only through changing (diversifying) the economic structure, it is possible to solve large scale tasks in the economic development of the country. It is important to solve such problems by creating an effective system of strategic management of social and economic development, the basic method of which is strategic planning. Institutional mechanisms will ensure the rational distribution of productive forces through the creation of special economic zones and territories of priority social and economic development. The article shows that in recent years, new institutes of the territorial development have been created at the federal and regional levels. The basic and well-proven instrument of strategic development is territories of priority social and economic development (TOSED). As a positive example, the author presents the analysis of the effectiveness of five single-industry towns that have received the status of TOSED (Naberezhnye Chelny, Nizhnekamsk, Zelenodolsk, Chistopol, Mendeleevsk) in the Republic of Tatarstan. Consequently it allows to draw the conclusion regarding the effectiveness of this tool from the standpoint of analyzing the dynamics of number of residents’ growth, number of workers, volume of capital investments made by residents.