APPROACH TO DETERMINING THE ECONOMIC EFFECT OF REGIONAL FOREST COMPLEXES

The relevance of the research is explained by the contradiction between the availability of forest resources, the demand for timber materials, and the low economic efficiency of their use, conservation, and reproduction. The lack of a regional approach to economically assessing each region’s contribution to the total gross domestic product creates a distorted economic picture of the low efficiency of the country’s entire forest sector. The situation is aggravated by the approach used by Rosleskhoz to evaluate the powers delegated to the subjects of the Russian Federation in the field of forest relations. Evaluating powers and their ultimate outcome are not the same; it is possible to exercise powers, utilize all allocated subsidies, and yet not achieve the final result, given the duration of the production process in forestry and the absence of a unified opinion on assessing the final outcomes in terms of forest conservation, reproduction, and utilization. The aim of the study is to justify the need for a regional approach to assessing the economic efficiency of regional forestry complexes, and to develop a system of evaluation indicators that take into account the social, economic, and forest management conditions of the regions. The research materials used included the scientific work of the Department of Forest Policy, Economics, and Management at the Saint Petersburg State Forest Technical University, as well as studies by domestic forest economists examining the development patterns of the forest industry and forestry. The hypothesis of the study is that a regional approach to assessing the economic efficiency of forest complexes in the subjects of the Russian Federation will reflect the objective results of their activities and contribute to the formation of an adequate regional forest policy. To achieve this goal, the study employed theoretical research methods, which at the initial stage most fully correspond to the research topic and the set objectives. The authors acknowledge that the proposed approach to the economic assessment of the efficiency of regional forest relations is incomplete, as it does not take into account the ecological component of forests, expressed in monetary terms. Research findings: economic, social, ecological, and legal factors have been identified that need to be considered in a comprehensive assessment of the performance of regional forest complexes; an indicator of economic effect has been proposed, tailored to the specifics of territorial forest-industrial complexes; a matrix for forming indicators of economic efficiency of the production and business activities of regional forest complexes and indicators of the cost-effectiveness of managing territorial forest-industrial complexes has been proposed.