SPATIAL ASYMMETRIES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN CONDITIONS OF ADMINISTRATIVE AND FINANCIAL DECENTRALIZATION

Abstract

Theoretical principles and world experience of the influence of administrative and financial decentralization on spatial development processes are highlighted and modern tendencies and peculiarities of territorial differentiation of development in Ukraine formed under conditions of decentralization are revealed. It is determined that Ukraine failed to avoid the deepening territorial socio-economic differentiation, and the mechanisms of direct regulation and indirect influence turned out to be unable to resolve the problems of the unevenness of the endogenous community development potential and various efficiency of its use. The current state of spatial development in Ukraine is characterized by the following trends: (i) decreased level of interregional differentiation; (ii) increased differentiation at the level of districts under influence of budgetary decentralization mechanisms; (iii) increased level of differentiation of fiscal capacity of territorial communities having direct budgetary relations with the state budget; (iv) increased concentration of economic activity in “growth points”, which produces a tendency to expand the areas of depressiveness; (v) increased asymmetry between suburban areas and territorial communities remote from major cities; (vi) deepening the gap in financial capacities within the same district between the territorial communities that joined the united territorial communities and those that were not included.
Directions of leveling the risks of strengthening the intraregional differentiation of the development of territorial communities under current conditions are determined as follows:
– strengthening the role of the regional level of governance and specifying its functions under conditions of decentralization;
– provision of the regional level of governance with financial resources, which will support the implementation of regional economic development projects;
– transfer to the basic level of financial resources, which a community can direct to its own economic development, and not only to repair (or develop) social infrastructure or its maintenance;
– propagation of development impetuses from cities to surrounding territories on the basis of their transformation into centers of the united territorial communities;
– revision of the budgetary equalization mechanisms by including the local budgets revenues from rental payments in calculating the taxability of a territory.