Potential quality deficit

The investment potential is “attracted” into few regions meanwhile natural resources, the location and infrastructure are still the key factors in the investment potential formation for most regions

Till the middle of the 90s investors were first of all interested in the region potential when taking choice of a site for their efforts. They considered the country's risks very high and non-transparent, thus there was not much difference for them between Veliky Novgorod and Nizhny Novgorod. When they became aware of Russian various conditions the investment risk level was prioritized without doubt. Now besides risks they again got mostly interested in the potential: whether the region is ready to large-scale projects (refer to “The Information and methods”).

A group of ten regions, which are the first by the total investment potential, was changed. The Nizhny Novgorod and the Rostov Regions were replaced by the united Perm Territory and the Krasnoyarsk Territory (table 4).

However a formal relative stability is constantly followed by the concentration process. Moscow maximally augmented its investment potential, its share in the country again increased and reached 17.5%. As a result the share of the three first regions - Moscow, St.-Petersburg and the Moscow Region is more than a quarter of the country's total investment potential. As a whole the investment potential concentration is observed in several largest regions while the share of other regions gradually decreases. If in 1995 Russia had 37 regions with a share in the total investment potential, exceeding 1%, then in 2005 only 25 regions remained. Such situation is connected not only with the concentration of the population, production, services and other kinds of activity in these regions, but with the developed practice of the registration and the tax account of the largest companies. For example, the significant part of Gazprom activity results is recorded in Moscow. Therefore unlike the Khanty-Mansijsk Autonomous District, the leading role in the investment potential of which is played by the financial component (40%), the natural resource part (49%) dominates in the structure of the potential of the Yamalo-Nenets District.

According to the theory of the change of economic ways the overwhelming number of our regions is in the initial stage of development (the prevalence of the so-called “primary” sectors - extractive industries, agriculture). The total investment potential (diagram 9) is predominated by the regions, in which the natural resource and infrastructural potentials are the main. There are 53 such regions.

The following three potential kinds tentatively related to the “secondary” sector of the economic activity (industrial, tourist) are leaders in the potential of 18 regions. And only seven regions of Russia have the prevailing potential components, ranking with the highest “fourth” sector of the economy - institutional and innovative potentials. Moscow is an absolute champion among them.

As to the stimulation of the innovative development way, so welcomed by our government, 11 regions with the largest share of the innovative potential in the total potential of each region (table 5) can be selected as top-priority regions as per the rating results. According to the Minpromenergo department head Stanislav Naumov, today the ministry is just actively elaborating incentive measures (that notorious industrial policy) which will allow regions to realize this potential.

And there is one more point. At the rating discussion the RUIE president Alexander Shokhin noted, that already now many regions have encountered the most severe manpower shortage. Having got the state support in the implementation of the priority projects, many of them will have to attract outside labor. This thesis was also very convincingly proved by the rating. There are no Russian regions, in which the labor potential would be a determining factor in the formation of the investment potential.