ECONOMIC FOUNDATION FOR UKRAINE’S RURAL SETTLEMENTS AND PERSPECTIVES OF ITS STRENGTHENING

Abstract

The formed system of rural settling is an essential basis for ensuring the economic and social development of the country. The transformational changes in such system affect essentially the conditions of vital activity of the population, forms of its employment, and the accessibility of services. The modern dominant structural-functional changes in the system of rural settling in Ukraine (in particular, a refinement of the rural network and a depopulation of the majority of settlements) and the one-profile character of their economic activity deepen the destructive processes of socio-economic degradation of rural territories with extremely undesired consequences for the population (such as the unemployment, low earned incomes, absence of an appropriate access to social services).
Unfortunately, the executed studies confirm that the transformational changes in the sectoral structure of the national economy and in the forms of property and economic activity did not favor a strengthening of the economic basis of the functioning of Ukraine’s rural settlements. The perspectives of their further socio-economic development depend to a significant extent on the efficiency of the system of state’s support of the agrarian sector of the economy and the agriculture as its leading link, as well as on the possibilities of a transformation of personal rural farms into productive forms of a farming. In connection of a complication of the socio-economic situation in Ukraine, it is necessary to focus attention on the development of efficient system measures directed to the preservation of the available rural network of settlements and to the formation of conditions necessary for its development.