DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.33917/es-5.179.2021.16-27

Result of the government’s many years of efforts to liberalize the market of social services is a huge number of organizations that are privately owned — 45,9%, but which have minimal impact on the infrastructure development. The reason is that private business alienates long-term and capital-intensive projects, and the overwhelming part of the social infrastructure (for sports facilities it constitutes 95.2%) remains in the state and municipal ownership. The state mistakenly classifies concession projects as investment projects that are paid back only through fee-based exploitation. Thus, social policy is being deprived of a promising mechanism — transformation of concession agreements into the basis for socialization of private investments, infrastructure and services. The identified problems of social disorientation in specifying criteria for evaluating the proposals of participants in concession tenders form the basis for asocial conditions of concession agreements, which makes social services inaccessible to the general population. Commercialization of the activities of social facilities is admissible (although in a limited sense), but at the same time, services at state tariffs or free of charge should prevail. There is a need for systematic scientific and methodological work on cross-cutting incorporation of this approach into the current regulatory framework and guidelines in order to create a network of basic social infrastructure for all segments of the population.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33917/es-2.176.2021.38-44

The state’s responsibility for development of social infrastructure has not been questioned by modern Russian and foreign economists for many years. An indicator of implementing the national goals of the Russian Federation development for the period up to 2030 is not only an increase in life expectancy up to 78 years, but also a half reduction in the poverty level compared to indicator of 2017 [1], which points out the need not only to ensure additional income for the elderly, but also to reduce their costs. In the context of limited budgetary opportunities, the state’s social policy is focused on developing commercial sector of social services and the sector of socially oriented NPOs that are not interested in development of capital-intensive infrastructure component at social tariffs. Private stationary facilities are targeted at wealthy people and are inaccessible to most elderly people who have to turn to the gray services market. Excessive commercialization has embraced even state-owned infrastructures, created or reconstructed through the mechanism of public-private partnership. This results in limited availability of public good and competition for access to it.