POSSIBILITIES OF SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERREGIONAL LEVELING AND DEVELOPMENT OF DEPRESSIVE TERRITORIES

Abstract

The attention is paid to the problem of interregional differentiation in Ukraine and risks related to it. The legislative gaps in the formation of state’s regional policy concerning the efficient removal of interregional disbalances are indicated. The boundedness of the use of the index of regional human development for the determination of a level of interregional differences, as well as the inefficiency of base subsidies to regions for their overcoming, is emphasized. With regard for the world experience, the possibilities to apply special economic zones (SEZs) to the overcoming of the indicated differentiation and the depressivity of territories are substantiated. The author clarifies the reasons for failures of the legislative, methodical, and organizational-administrative character in the use of SEZs in Ukraine, which have transformed these zones from the factor of development of territories into a factor of the deepening of interregional differences and the oppression of the internal production. The expediency of the use of a special legal regime of the economic activity in SEZs as the totality of forms of the state help in the framework of the corresponding legislation for a realization of tasks of the regional policy and a modernization of country’s production apparatus is substantiated. The expediency to create productions in SEZs, which would execute the function of “the poles of growth,” is indicated. The directions of extension of the participation and the responsibility of the central and local authorities in the formation of SEZs and in the support of their efficient activity are shown. The principles of an organizational model of management, financial provision of the development of SEZs, and improvement of the system of provision of preferences on the basis of the application of the notions “new investments” and “backing intensity” are proposed. The approaches to the identification and the criteria of estimation of a level of depressivity of territories due to the use of productive, reproductive, socio-demographic, and ecological indicators reduced to the integral index of depressivity of territories are improved. The necessity of the use of this integral index is dictated by tasks of the implementation of the EU – Ukraine Association Agreement by our country.