Mitrofanova I. V.

Doctor of Science (Economics), Leading Scientific Researcher of the Institution of the Russian Academy of Science “Institute of the Social, Economic and Humanitarian Researches of the South Scientific Center of RAS’’, Russia

NEW FORMATS OF STRATEGIC TERRITORIAL MANAGEMENT

Today the coordination, consolidation and inclusion of the sectoral, regional and macroregional targeted programs into the priority megaprojectos of the territorial development of Russia are prospective as a new type of strategic projecting in macroeconomic and global dimension. Territorial megaproject is an integral selective and targeted program of the interregional scale, of macroeconomic significance and global character, including a set of interrelated projects united by a common goal, resources and period of time.

The state has the right to consider as a successful a reform that leads to long term capital intensive projects. Megaprojects are the investments projects of a large amount (more than 1 billion $) and psessing a global character (independently from the territorial level of realization). In contrast to financial investments, megaprojects are focused on the specific material result, exerting a considerable and a prolonged influence on the transformation of the economic space.

Russia has accumulated a considerable historic experience of megaprojecting both positive (Transibirian main) and negative (Baikal and Amur main). Nowdays the Russian government has exactly formulated its strategic goals and has developed an integrated system of the institutions for its realization. This fact became an powerful stimulus for the creation of the whole set of megaprojects in Russia. The created by 2008 the project base for megaprojecting is the result of both private initiative and of the new state economic policy [1].

The problem of Russian megaprojects is their strong accent on the industries that repeat the contemporary industrial and raw material model of the country’s development. According to the amounts of investments among the planned magaprojects prevail fuel – energy complex, metallurgy, infrastructural industries. However for the most part of regions, where these projects are to be realized, the development of the infrastructure and industry is just the first step for the implementation of the projects of a higher materials processing and higher added value.

In the whole world megaprojects generate the development of the adjacent sectors, economy of high raw materials processing, services and knowledge, become the kernel of the modern clusters, consumers and suppliers of the giant number of goods and services, centers for interregional economic development.

Significant part of Russian megaprojects is connected with industries of the new economy. They are big developing projects in the real estate sector, chemical industry, timber industry, tourism, innovative activity organization. In general the planned megaprojects ensure a considerable shift in the economic development of the country into the Asian part of Russia. The Ural, the Siberia and the Far East are macroregions where during the following 15–20 years the capital intensive growth will dominate that will be based on the coordinated actions of the state and business on the realization of the big specific investment projects.

The realization of megaprojects is connected with organizational and legal, administrative and managerial, macroeconomic, financial, engineering, political and other risks. Thus, organizational and legal risks are due to the fact that Russian megaprojects are realized in the constantly changing legal environment. The normative and legal base of the Russian Investment Fund, “Law on Concessions”, “Law on Special Economic Areas”, legal base of the state companies and corporation work are being endlessly corrected.

Or else, for instance, let’s take administrative and managerial risks. Unfortunately the megaprojects, and especially complicated among them integrated territorial megaprojects, that are being realized in Russia in the present time suffer from nonoptimal management, multiplicity of the responsible executives. The “one window” principle is necessary as the investors need that there would be one executive representing both business originators and the state.

International experience confirm that the risks of the routine and low quality engineering decisions are the most influential for any megaprojects. Megaprojects are realized under conditions of the quite visible problems in the Russian engineering industry. In spite of the appearance in the Russian market of a wide range of large engineering and construction giants of the international level, the quality of the engineering and construction services market after a continuous break in the realization of the large projects leaves much to be desired [1].

There were no new enterprises and infrastructures during last 20 years and this fact has led to a serious degradation of the engineering. The only way out is to restore the engineering industry again by means of private and state efforts. However this process must take place in a close interaction of the world leaders in engineering and to create a set of sectoral construction organizations. For this it is necessary to liberalize a lot in technical regulation and town planning policy as the technical town planning norms approved in Russia are confused and conservative in many ways, are being constantly complicated and there is no their unification and simplification but only complication. More and more different agreements and expertises are needed. It is necessary to follow the line of the convergence of homeland engineering standards with international ones for achieving progress in this important industry.

Clear instruments of state support are needed for the creation of the housing infrastructure, special order of the land disposal, special regime of the subsoil disposal within the realization of the integrated megaproject of the territorial development.

Little experience of the existence of the development institutes in Russia showed the deficit of culture and expertise in both risk analysis and management of the territorial megaprojecting. An important feature of a megaprogect is its publicity and large public reaction [2].

The peculiarities typical of the projects of such level, status and scale are the following:

– they ensure the improvement of the existing territorial proportions and the creation of the new ones and the efficient integrative interregional relations for a long term prospect which can determine the unanimity of the regional systems interests. This fact intensifies the opportunities of the rational usage of advantages of each of them for the common goal achievement and growth of the aggregate efficiency functioning of social and economic complex of the district in the whole;

– they provoke the considerable distraction of the capital investments, material, technical and labour resources at the continuing time lag for the obtaining the expected outcomes and this can lead to the arising of the long term inertial tendencies in the distribution of the capital investments and the usage of the production potential of the district subjects;

– they become the source of the origin of the centrifugal forces adjusting the interests of industries and territorial formations that can lead to a chain reaction that will affect numerous adjacent enterprises, taking part in the megaproject realization;

– they contribute to the creation of the powerful infrastructural objects of the strategic (district and federal) significance which later become the condition of the involvement into the economic turnover of the new resources and the creation of the large centers of the economic and social development;

– they need the accumulation of the resources by one common fund holder;

– they make absolutely new demands to the assessment of the multipurpose disposal opportunities of the territorial combinations of the resources and conditions in the interests of the macroregional community;

– they presuppose the participation of the organizations of different department subordination;

– they are based on the combination of the sectoral, territorial and program planning;

– they must reflect all the stages of the tirade “economy (production) – nature – population” beginning with the theoretical and methodological premises of the preplan research and investigations and finishing with real production processes;

– they encourage the development of the mechanism of the integrated non-departamental expertise of large scale correlated projects, being part of a megaproject;

– they have the uniqueness of the temporal and special frontiers within which the problems of the territorial development having “program nature” can be solved most consequently [3].

Accumulated in Russia administrative experience on the basis of the program and goal approach to the development of territories of different level allows to reveal a number of conditions requiring the application of such an instrument as megaprojects for territorial problem solving.

Firstly, the impartial necessity in the territorial megaprojecting arises in presence of problems which by nature are multipurpose and integrated and the traditional methods of sectoral and territorial administration and planning turn out to be insufficient for the grounded decision taking with an allowance for the situation complicity engendered by varied tangle interests and relations inside a territorial community.

Secondly, the time interval needed for the problem revelation and problem removal does not fit as a rule into the middle term (3–5 years) period. Meanwhile it is exceptionally important to analyze in time the whole history of the origin of a particular problem together with the revelation of its important stages of its intensification. Every problem of the territorial character has it own temporal logic of development.

Thirdly, megaprojects are necessary when the area of the dissemination of the territorial problems does not coincide with the nets of the economic and administrative division into districts. Territorial borders of the decision of these or those social and economic problems depend both on the potential resources capacity and the scale of the factors of production involved into the economic turnover taking into consideration the radius of influence of the program measures.

As the historic and contemporary homeland experience shows there are at least two prevailing limits of the territorial problem solving. In the first case problems of such linkage at their practical realization unite several administrative units bound by the common idea of the problem solving. In the second case the territory within which a problem is being realized, occupies only a part of an oblast, region, district. A rare exception is the situation when the territory having a specific problem completely coincides with the boundaries of this or that administrative territory.

Forth, territorial megaprojects are reasonable in case of occurrence of the necessity of the complex disposal of the natural resources of intersectoral and multipurpose usage. Intensification of the intersectoral significance of the natural resources makes contemporary demands for the assessment of the opportunities on the multipurpose usage of every resource in interest of numerous interested territorial subjects and different organizations. This fact leads to the change of the traditional approaches according to which every interested department approached the prospecting and resource disposal from subjective point of view (for their own problem solving) and corresponding requirements to their qualitative and quantitative features. As a result one and the same resource was examined by numerous organizations autonomously and this led to the duplication of works and consequently to their value increase. In addition at the resource assessment from the point of view of the development of different spheres of the national economy on the strength of their limitedness the contradictoriness of their interests was inevitable. The integrated usage of natural and intellectual resources requires a intersectoral approach. Its usage will allow to create a highly efficient economic structure of a territory, to ensure the formation of a common production and social infrastructure, contributing to a more reasonable disposal of its natural resources.

Fifth, megaprojecting becomes indispensable when existing forms and methods of management prove to be incapable to ensure the reciprocal coordination of a number of projects of sectoral and intersectoral character, united by common goals and objectives. Meanwhile such linkage is absolutely indispensible already on the strength of the fact that coordination of sectoral interests inevitably engenders a chain of inner contradictions. Thus, every industry project must ensure the realization of quite specific production and economic objectives for that terms and the sequence of its stages of realization are determined in compliance with the resource opportunities.

The criterion for the determination of temporal parameters of a project is a purpose orientation of an industry. However optimal sectoral terms of the project realization can not coincide with the terms of the whole problems realization or even can lead to the violation of its temporal logic. It is evident that the creation of a net schedule obligatory for all ministries and departments even within a prospective strategic industrial planning is quite complicated. And only in the process of the development of a territorial and purposeful and targeted program it becomes possible to solve problems connected with the formation of the most reasonable proportions between production and non manufacturing capital investments, various infrastructural sectors, construction industry and investment rates.

Sixth megaprojecting is efficient in case of the necessity of an integrated economic development of new territories especially complicated and hardly accessible ones. It is possible to develop the resources of such territories only at the integrated solving of social and economical and scientific, technical problems an their development, among which the main are: 1) carrying out of multilateral scientific and research works on the study of the components behaviour of the natural environment at various regimen usage of natural resources; 2) analysis of the opportunities usage of technological systems and means of production, ensuring the labour saving and reduction of the influence of the complicated social and weather conditions on the production activity, the way of life of people and contributing to the efficient economic development of natural resources of a territory.

The departing methodological statements which must be put into the basis of the territorial megaprojecting to the study and programmable problems removal of the territorial linkage that have a “program nature” are: 1) pronounced interdisciplinary and systematic character of the preprogrammable research within which the integration of problems of theoretical and applied character is especially clearly revealed. As a result it becomes possible to elaborate a common system of notions, quantitative assessments, permitting to use the obtained partial results for integrated conclusions and generalizations; 2) the importance of the role or preplan research and project study at the direct participation of scientific and project organizations which is conserved and at the elaboration of specific practical decisions taken at the stage of the program realization; 3) multiple choice character of the different aspects elaboration of the territorial goal program for different environmental conditions when the most heterogenous, planned for realization measures must be correlated and agreed upon, ensuring the program integrity. The presence of different variants of a territorial program enlarges the opportunities of the usage of the engendered in it flexible properties; 4) the necessity of the integral solving of the problem connected with the provision of the harmonious interaction of the elements of the production forces of a territory with its natural environment. This requires the application of such technological schemes and means of production which would not lead to the violation of the acceptable “intrusion norms” of people and managed by them manufactures into the natural environment [4].

Contemporary reality is such that the state regional policy in Russia has a propensity for the objects, processes and proportions of the mezolevel of the national economic space. Urgent necessity of the active adoption of the efficient federalism principles requires the transformation of the existing today ideas about federals districts of Russia into the comprehensive whole of the formation of the strategic management system of their development capable to ensure a high level of the special and temporal coordination and interrelatedness between the systems of territorial management, marketing and different functional properties, measurements of important spheres of macroregional community life. Today regions and federal districts are supposed to play an important role as organizers of the processes of the change of the “economy of resource development” into the “economy of their systematic reproduction (restoration and multiplication)” being the space of the interaction of resource subsystems.

However for the present moment federal districts of Russia are rather mechanical consolidation of regional economies of a conglomerate type in presence of real premises and opportunities for the improvement of common conditions of the reproduction. The integration of the parts of these conglomerates into harmonious territorial social natural and economic systems is possible only on the base of the strategic management and innovative tools of the territorial adminstration i.e. strategic megaprogramming.

Significant territorial strategic plans that are being realized today in Russia in the format of a megaproject (“Complex development of the Southern Yakutia”, “The Ural industrial – The Ural polar” etc) are mainly directed on the transformation of the economic space of the eastern part of the country. This activity even in presence of all predictable effects for the subjects of these macroregions cannot but strengthen the asynchronous character, asymmetry and differentiation of the space development. The necessity of the creation of the Russian South macroregion strategy in the format of a megaproject has arisen. This project must become a new way of strategic programming in the macroeconomic and global dimension.

The goal of a megaproject is the development of the South of Russia as megaregion in the global economic space. Strategic vectors, substantially developing the idea of a megaproject include: the creation in the South of Russia new and development of existing international transport corridors and road nets, modernization of sea and river ports, airdromes, railroad terminals, rationalization of the energy supply structure, widening of the recreational complexes infrastructure, investment support of unique natural reserves of the Northern Caucasus.

However the successful realization of these projects requires the involvement into the strategic programming all the subjects of the South of Russia in a systematic format and is impossible without the support of the federal center. Only the combination of the state directed development with the initiative of subjects of different levels of the spatial hierarchy will allow to realize competitive advantages of southern regions of the country, to raise their importance in global and national economic space.

The given territorial megaproject should be considered as an integral selective targeted program of the interregional scale, macroregional importance and global character, including a number of interrelated projects united by the common goal, dedicated resources and determined for this execution time [5].

The coordination, consolidation, inclusion, complete or partial inclusion of sectoral, regional, district federal targeted problems into the into the priority megaprojectos of the territorial development of Russia are prospective as a new type of strategic projecting in macroeconomic and global dimension [6].

Organizational mechanism of formation and realization of a district megaprojects wants the enforcement of the middle administrative level. The collaborators of the Southern Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Science and the scientists of the Volgograd State University made proposals on the organizational structure inprovement of a territorial megaproject administration “Development of the South of Russia”.

The following measures were supposed to be taken in the South of Russia:

1) The creation of the directorate of the federal targeted programs at the Presidential Missions in the South and North Caucasus federal districts. This direction would be responsible for the strategic program and targeted research and the explanation of practical measures in the given direction working full time.

The design of territorial megaprojects of federal district development is a relatively new, a complicated and a prospective task. Its successful solving is possible only on the basis of the creative cooperation and within of an integrated, well staffed, and qualified group of specialists. The mentioned group was supposed to be created under the scientific and methodological leadership of the Council for the Examination of the Production Forces at the Ministry of the Economic Development of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of the Regional Development of Russia, of the Southern Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the involvement of the scientists from the leading higher education institutions of the South of Russia. The support for such a team must be the Megaproject direction [6].

2) The establishment of the Strategic Council of the South of Russia. It is planned to be a constant body for the creation of a set of first priority program projects and its expertise, to carry out a constructive assessment of the taken measures and the achieved results with the aim of their phased yearly adjustment on the basis of the coordination of the interests of the representatives of all level administration, business and public.

The Strategic Council and the apparat of the South and North Caucasus federal districts administration, being based upon the legal resource, given by the President of the Russian Federation to the federal districts and using regional scientific and educational complex must develop basic conceptual directions of the development of the South of Russia as a document and then to inform about its content to regional authorities as a frame for future studies and projects within the megaproject “Development of the South of Russia”. And only the receiving of reply strategies of every subject of the South macroregion will allow to adjust the basic target and then to approve the agreed variant of the modernized megaproject, ensuring ipso facto the ordered democratic procedure of the decision making, respecting the balance of the interests of the federal center, of the district, of the regions and economic units.

3) The establishment of the strategic financial fund. The federal targeted program “South of Russia” (2001–2007, 2008–2012) that has been being realized for these years there is no clear mechanism of the targeted concentration and the efficient distribution of the financial resources for the realization of program steps that leads in many cases to the impossibility of the control for their usage and leads to the dissemination of the financial resources and their misuse. That’s why the creation at the macroregional level at the Presidential Mission of the Southern and North Caucus federal districts of Russia of a centralized strategic financial fund would allow to accumulate financial resources, whose formation and usage must be realized on corporate basis, reflecting horizontal and vertical integration of the social and economic complex of the South of Russia.

As an indispensable measure it is advisable to raise the level of the interaction of federal and regional executive authorities including the involvement of territorial departments of the federal ministries and agencies. A substantial aid could come from the Association of the economic interaction of regions (“Northern Caucasus”, “Big Volga” and others), and from regional board of the executive authorities [7].

Thereby an important vector of the modernization of the strategic programming of the regional development of Russian macroregions is the institutional legalization and functional strengthening of the integrated middle (district) administrative unit of the large interregional targeted programs (megaprojects) at the expense of creation of specialized organizational and administrative structures at the Mission of the Russian President in the district (strategic district council, district directorate, coordination public council, strategic district financial fund) and their allotment with the corresponding powers.

REFERENCES

1. Galkin I. Megaprojects come back [Electronic resource]. URL: http://www.rg.ru/2006/05/16/investicii.html (reference date: 12.06.2010).

2. Mitrofanova I.V., Starokozheva G. I. From district Federal Target Program – to priority megaproject of development of southern macroregion of Russia // National interests: priorities and safety. 2009. №14.

3. Methodological positions of preparation of regional programs of various level / Academic adviser R.I. Shniper. Novosibirsk: Institute of economy and the industrial production organization SO AN USSR, 1989. Р. 17–19.

4. Mitrofanova I.V. Strategic programming of development of macroregion: a monograph. Rostov-on-Don: Publishing house JUNTS of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2009. 528 р.

5. Mitrofanova I.V. Strategic Programming of the Macroregion Development: Ways of Modernization. Edition LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG., 2010. 432 p.

6. Ghukov A.N. Strategy of social and Economic Development of Federal district in the format of the territorial megaproject // National interests: priorities and safety. 2010. №23. Р. 34–38.

7. Mitrofanova I.V., Ghukov A.N. The organizational mechanism formation of the Federal programs management of large territories // National interests: priorities and safety. 2011. №8. P. 14–21.