Проблеми та можливості фінансування інноваційних проектів з метою регіонального розвитку в Україні

Abstract

На основі аналізу джерел фінансування проектів інноваційного розвитку в Україні визначено, що в умовах модернізації бюджетних відносин та децентралізації управлін- ських функцій зростають можливості використання зовнішніх фінансових ресурсів. Водночас підтверджено недостатню ефективність залучення коштів Державного фонду регіонального розвитку, що спеціально створений з метою підтримки місцевих ініціатив стратегічного значення. Доведено, що ефективним механізмом реалізації пріоритетних для суспільства проектів може бути їх фінансування на основі краудфандингу.

The aim of the article is to investigate problems and opportunities for financial support of innovative projects, fulfilling the need for are regional development. In the context of tasks to ensure the effectiveness of the financial mechanism to stimulate regional development authors have analyzed the main sources of funding innovations in Ukraine compared with developed countries, have determined the effectiveness of the financial support for the implementation of innovative projects from the State Fund for Regional Development (SFRR), current trends and possibilities of alternative financial source usage for innovative ideasimplementation. It is proved,that current trends of foreign direct investment outflow and the lack of public finances for the regional development, local communities and authorities should use the external financial sources. One of them is SFRR, which iscreated to stimulate initiatives in the implementation of projects aiming at strategic priorities of the regions. However, based on the analysis of the dynamics of submitted and completed projects, it was argued that this financial resource cannot fulfill the actual needs of the community innovative development. Among the projects that have received funding,innovative proposals are not dominated; the share of traditional projects in the fields of education, housing and utilities sector, health care and sports are prevailed. The refusal to finance may not only be caused by the lack of financial resources, but also by the insufficient quality of projects. Due to the high significance of the strategic objectives of innovation (22 regions of Ukraine have identified this target as a priority) increases the weight of need to find other financial sources. In addition to grant programs, new mechanism for innovations implementation appears, called crowdfunding. It has the rapid development in the world;however it is not well developed in Ukraine. Thus, the crowdfunding world market in 2015 estimates in measures over 34 billion with predictions to increaseup to 96 billion. In Ukraine only two crowdfunding platforms are active today; they use the principle of fundraising “all or nothing”. At the same time, attracting resources via crowdfunding is the most transparent way which allows identifyingthe most appropriate needs of society. So, we assumed that the most innovative ideas were presented in the section “Technology” on crowdfunding web-sites, where we have determined that 16 from 40 of the submittedprojects gathered the required amount of funding (their value reached 115 thousand UAH per project) and included different ideas – from tools for 3Dprinting, environmental projects to provide innovative solutions in medicine and education. As a result of our study we made the following findings. Decentralization in Ukraine is accompanied by increased responsibility for development in the region. While the importance of the need to attract financial resources from all available sources are steadily increasing, as well as fiscal autonomy is not a full guarantee of the communities financial viability to finance innovative projects, the possibility to use external financial sourcessignificantly increasedtoday. SFRR, as we proved, cannot fully fulfil the financing needs of regional development. Financing innovation through crowdfunding remains undervalued alternative in Ukraine. However, raising funds from various sources requires higher activity and selforganization of local communities.