PROBLEMS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP MECHANISMS IN THE SOCIAL SPHERE IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Today, when some federal budget items in Russia depend on a political situation and when oil price declines to its lowest level for the last three years, it is necessary to look for new stable mechanisms for implementing large-scale projects and not just at the expense of the federal budget. Such a mechanism could be a public-private partnership (PPP) law (224-FZ), which was adopted at the federal level only on the 3rd of July 2015 and came into force on the 1st January 2016. The law of the participation in the PPP was previously adopted in almost all regions of Russia but did not have a single regulatory framework. As such, a framework could be considered the law On Concession Agreements" (115-FZ, 21.07.2005) which regulates relationships between business and government in the implementation of joint projects, but this regulatory document raised questions from participants. The law 224-FZ is already in the process of editing (from 29.12.2015), and analysts and lawyers compare it actively with the law 115-FZ. In our study of the implementation of mechanisms of PPP in Russia and the analysis of the legal and regulatory framework we found that these projects are infrastructural and apply to the road constriction, building, housing and communal services, and to a lesser extent to the social sphere. According to the Unified information system of public private partnership in Russia on the 30th March 2016 1159 projects was recorded, 237 of them are in the social sphere, which is about 20% of the total number of projects. Herewith these projects are mostly related to construction, landscaping or reconstruction of social facilities. In 2016, in contrast to 2015, the expenditure from the federal budget increases by 2.97% in social sphere, but decreases in education despite the fact that in accordance with the federal program of increase of competitiveness by 2020 the leading universities of the country have to get into the Top-100. In this case, universities have to develop projects and attract investors in the face of the business to obtain financing. PPP could help achieve these goals, but opportunities of this mechanism for the social sphere are poorly reflected in the law 224-FZ. The article discusses the problem of regulatory and methodological nature for the implementation of PPP in the social sphere.