The Independence of Rural Settlements' Budgets in A Region's Economic Security System

The economic independence of rural settlements' budgets is an important factor of a region's socio-economic development and is the efficiency criterion of its budget policy and budgeting process in general. That is why it is necessary to elaborate a set of measures on fundraising rural settlements in order to enhance a region's economic security. The authors have analyzed Volgograd Oblast's rural settlements' budgets independence by their dynamics and structure. Due to the absence of a comprehensive budgets' independence assessment methodology, the authors have carried out the analysis based on the indicators noted in various research works related to this study. The calculations have shown a strong budgets' dependence on subsidies and inter-budgetary transfers. Taking into account the functioning conditions and demands of each rural settlement, the study suggests a set of measures on increasing the settlements' revenue. The study also proposes a prediction calculation of the revenue value and the independence indicators' fluctuation. Finally, the study presents methodological problems in assessing the budgets' independence, the absence of standards for the educed indicators and the difficulty in elaborating universal approaches to enhancing the independence.