RURAL ECONOMY UNDER CONDITIONS OF FISCAL DECENTRALIZATION AND COVID-19 WORLD CORONAVIRUS INFECTION PANDEMIC: A CLUSTER PARADIGM
Authors:   Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, Ukraine, Petrukha Serhii 
Published: May 2021

The study presents the evolution of the rural economy state regulation system based on the experience of economic relations, which covered a long historical path of development. Definitely that, in Ukraine, it is relatively developed, however, in accordance with the challenges caused by a corona crisis and fiscal decentralization, individual methods of the state regulation of the rural economy require not only further improving but also evaluating for real sources of revenues of territorial communities. This stipulated the goal of research (development of theoretical provisions, elaboration of methodical and practical recommendations on studying an impact of the corona crisis and decentralization on the rural economy), enabled to build up a respective methodology based on the combination of general scientific and special methods of research of interconnections between financial capacity of local budgets – rural economy (rural development) – regulation potential from rural territorial communities as well as formulate a chain of the following conclusions. A recession caused by COVID-19 and forced sequestration of the State Budget of Ukraine has made a start of financial uncertainty and low predictability of formation of the revenue side of local budgets, having posed not only a real threat to the implementation of the second stage of the decentralization reform in Ukraine but also having cancelled out a regulatory basis for sectoral modernization of the national and local economy, having essentially braked forming institutional capacity of territorial communities to regulate the rural economy, in particular, due to reduction in budgetary appropriations for the functioning of the State Fund for Regional Development, having formed a steady trend towards delaying in establishing the Fund for Development of Rural Areas. It is found that within the framework of the dual model of regulation of the rural economy at the local level, it is takes place by forming respective, as a rule, three-year programs of development of the agrarian sector of the economy, however, at the level, which still does not allow not only to ensure an expected level of local value-added of agro-products but also shape the regulation architecture ideology, from territorial communities, of the institutional composition of the rural economy, bringing, to the forefront, their potential to support the said process, which closely correlates with financial capacity. A conducted corona test for financial capacity against the background of reduction in the fiscal base of local budgets has established that the existing situation with receipts of financial resources does not allow to gain value-added from the functioning of the rural economy at the local level, having left a traditional level of regional dependence from the effectiveness of the performance of the agricultural production, which does not correlate, to a sufficient extent, with program values of stimulation of rural development, cutting them, on a priority basis, against the background of the need to improve transport connection to timely deliver medical aid to the population, be in a position to test it for the presence of a coronavirus and do future vaccination. The scientific novelty of the results of research consists in developing the theoretical provisions as well as elaborating methodical and practical recommendations on providing enhancement of the efficiency of the state regulation of the rural economy on the basis of the developed multi-stage methods of the assessment of the state of the rural economy and regulatory potential of territorial communities including forming a specialized system of assessment indicators reflecting an impact of the corona crisis on the status of local budgets (with a focus on rural territorial communities) with a projection of the degree of importance of each its component in the system of management of changes in the rural economy.