But still, how the trends are changing in the regional economy ... Remember how all experts-republican, Caucasian, federal-7-10 years ago said that the republic should earn itself, that we need to jump off the federal subsidized needle. The entire economic agenda was filled with news about the local "victories" of our ministries and departments. Time passed, and the rhetoric has changed.

Now we understand that the level of stagflation of the economy is increasing, and the understanding has come that the infrastructure lag of Dagestan cannot be defeated without financial investments. So, subsidies are still needed. Now the main priority is control over the spending of this money. Hence landing, the fight against corruption, the development of public initiatives, external management introduced by the federal center in the republic, and much more. In addition, as it turned out, the period of the pandemic crisis is much easier to experience those republics that do not have an autonomous budget. That is, the independence of the budget today is a risk factor.

"Black hole" needs money

See for yourself. The Dagestan Communal Infrastructure Development Index, according to the analytical unit of the Infraone group of companies, was 5.68 last year - this is one of the lowest indices in the country. Below is only in Tuva (5.45). There are other reasons to think. The same picture was observed in other areas. Transport index - 3.18; energy - 3.24; social - 3.83; Telecommunication - 3.87.

Dagestan, and the entire North Caucasus region, spends the least in the country on infrastructure development. So, last year, 434.5 billion rubles were mastered in the Central Federal District. Following the amount of expenses for the infrastructure, the Volga, South and North-Western Federal Districts follow (the expenses of each of them exceeded 100 billion rubles). Outsiders for expenses for the industry-North Caucasus (45.5 billion rubles), Far Eastern (80.6 billion rubles) and Siberian (84 billion rubles) federal districts. Moreover, the most sad thing is that all these expenses are the existing infrastructure that we remained from the Soviet state. The banal patting of holes, which, as you know, does not solve the problem, but only delays. There are almost no money for Greenfield projects1.

Symptomatic fresh example. The head of Dagestan, Sergei Melikov, at a meeting of the Council on Urban Planning, instructed the mayors of Makhachkala and Kaspiysk to prepare the concepts of cities. The information was taken into account, but the mayor of Makhachkala Salman Dadaev during his speech did not miss the moment to say that the city today is in a certain “urban planning trap”, since during a certain period the capital developed chaotic, as -intensive, without urban planning and regulation.

He said very classic and painfully familiar: “The existing infrastructure is designed for 350–380 thousand people, today, according to official figures, 730 thousand people live, and in fact - more than a million. All this ultimately led to the fact that the city has a negative debit throughout the infrastructure, there is not enough water and power supply capacities. ”

We perfectly understand the mayor of Makhachkala. We need money. Makhachkala’s budget to solve the communal problem of the capital, is not enough (even if it is multiplied by three), and no one will do private investment in this “black hole”. In order to knock out money from the Fund for Promoting the Reforming of the Housing and Public Utilities, we have not yet grown “institutionally”. And such a problem is everywhere. Are we still thinking about getting off the subsidized needle? It is more logical to think how to spend this money correctly so that they get to the addressee.

According to Fincam.ru (the rating is compiled on the basis of data from the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation) in Russia only 13 non -actual regions. Dagestan, as you understand, is not one of them and is unlikely to ever enter.

In 2020, Dagestan received the largest increase in subsidized deductions - the increase amounted to +6.626 billion. In total, in 2020, subsidies to the Dagestan budget amounted to 72.892 billion rubles (see table 1).

Table 1. TOP-10 of the subsidies of Russia in 2020 (according to the FINCAM.ru website).

Name of the region	Value, billion rubles.
Republic of Dagestan	72.892
Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)	51.598
Kamchatka Territory	41,129
Chechen Republic	33,485
Altai Territory	29.522
Stavropol Territory	24,291
Republic of Buryatia	21.862
Republic of Crimea	21.454
Republic of Tuva	18.626
Republic of Bashkortostan	17,173

Autonomy of the budget - risk factor

Surprisingly, but the fact. Another whist in favor of subsidiability in this period of time. “Support” came from those fields from where they did not expect.

Study of KB Strelka 2 (which leads RBC with reference to the source) showed that the more the city has its own income from personal income tax and income tax, the higher the risks with a pandemic crisis. That is, translating into a more understandable language, the independent the city budget and the more it has its own sources of income, the stronger the danger of leaving for a “deep peak” during the crisis.

That is, in fact, this is the “sales of dreams” of any mayor, who, instead of looking for their own sources of income, turns a light movement of the hand ... into a monetary operator. Now, in fact, it is most important for him to spend them correctly without allowing “leaks” and not giving a reason to come to a fiscal or law enforcement agencies with a check. And neither your electoral losses, nor you transaction costs.

By the way, the Strelka rating is based on the assessment of the situation where the reduction in personal income tax revenues occurs by reducing employment in the sectors most affected by the pandemic, as well as the income tax on enterprise income by reducing the income of companies in the affected sectors. The compilers of the rating note that when calculating the degree of vulnerability, analysts divided the cities of Russia into several groups by the population (from 250 thousand to 1 million people, from 100 thousand to 250 thousand, etc.) and the type of municipality.

So, for example, in the top 5 of the least vulnerable cities, Dagestan cities of Kaspiysk, Izberbash, Yuzhno-Sukhokumsk and Dagestan lights fell. Also in the ranking outside the TOP-5 there are Buinaksk ("Middle Cities", a vulnerability assessment-4.0) and Derbent ("Big Cities", an assessment of vulnerability-10.3). Unfortunately, we did not find the capital of Dagestan in the indicated rating (the rating compilers note that not all cities were in the study). The cities of federal significance, which are not municipal formations and have a different budget structure, did not fall into the rating.

We understand that such ratings always have an alleged (indicative) character, but the message and an occasion to think is important for us. Experts note that in order to protect the city budget from the crisis, it would seem simple, but, in fact, complex systemic things. The complexity of these steps is aggravated by the fact that they need to be done precisely at a crisis moment, when the economy is so beating. We are talking about diversification of the city economy, diversification of sources of city revenues and the presence/absence of gratuitous revenues from other budgets (cities whose income prevails free of charge from other budgets, will suffer less from the current crisis). Do Dagestan cities need it? And if necessary, can they? ] § [

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1 Greenfield projects-the type of investment site with very good prospects. However, these projects are initially not provided with infrastructure. The company independently creates the necessary for the functioning of such a company and the work of employees transport, energy, social, engineering, communal and telecommunication facilities. A feature of Greenfield projects-for them it is necessary to create significant concomitant infrastructure. Thus, these projects do not parasitize on the existing capabilities of the region, but, on the contrary, contribute to their growth, development, opening new areas for the appearance of other industries and industries.

2 KB Strelka is a consulting company that is interesting to the city as a complex system. The company provides strategic consulting, urban planning and project management services.

Cities of "subsidized" power