ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFICIENCY OF EXPENDITURE ON HOUSING AND UTILITIES IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Abstract

Relevance. The issue of assessing the effectiveness of spending on housing and utility services in Russia remains underexplored. The volume of public funds allocated to the “Housing and Utility Services” sector nationwide has grown 60.2% in 2020 compared to 2016; compared to the total government spending, the increase is from 3.2% in 2016 to 3.7% in 2020. Relatively high government spending on housing and utility services in Russia is associated with numerous sectoral problems – primarily, severe deterioration of fixed assets. The utilities infrastructure continues to deteriorate in literally every region of the country. The goal of this study is to assess the effectiveness of the extended government’s spending on the housing and utility services in the Russian Federation, to develop recommendations for changing the spending structure and volume.

The of the study is the budget spending of the extended government of the Russian Federation for housing and utility services.

The general research methodology consists of critical analysis and reasoning, a hypothetico-deductive method, case studies, generalization analysis and extrapolation (interpolation) of results.

The main findings of the study are as follows:

approaches were identified and model tools developed to assess the impact of the volume and structure of government spending on the efficiency of housing and utility services;

Russian and international practice of legislative regulation and financing of the housing and utility services sector was analyzed;

based on the formulated hypotheses on the conditions and factors affecting the efficiency of the housing and utility services in Russia and abroad, econometric modeling was carried out and the results were interpreted to test the hypotheses;

proposals and recommendations were formulated to change the structure and volume of government spending on the housing and utility services.

The findings of the study can be used in the interests of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Finance of Russia for the purpose of improving approaches to managing the costs of housing and utility services in the Russian Federation.

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