Что поддерживает ПНП «Развитие АПК», поддерживая ЛПХ? Акционистская перспектива на неформальную экономику

Abstract

According to current Russian laws individual household farm (IHF) running is a free-of-taxes commodity production. In fact these laws enforce the persistence of an informal economy, which contradicts the intention to formalize informal economic activities and bring formal actors of this branch in disadvantage. So why would a XXIth-century state support low-efficient and exotic kind of shadow economy, i.e. an individual household farm? Concerning the efficiency two arguments are plausible: economic and social. First, large-scale farms produce less then one half of a gross national agroproduct, and they have been the least efficient in product per area unit of cultivated lands. Second, supporting self-employment is crucial due to high unemployment rate in the rural territories and inadequately low rate of self-employees in the Russian economy as a whole. Supporting conditions (privileged crediting, instead of traditional subsidizing) are fitted only for socially secure and economically prospective owners. As for the uncommonness of such support and the status of the IHFs themselves the argument claims, that according to «international standards» such economies appropriately correspond to informally acting small businesses. Those countries, which do care about development, provide privileges in taxation and reporting procedures to priority branches (e.g. agriculture sector in developed societies) and small business. The key question is not «to support or not to support IHFs», but to estimate the particular consequences which it may bring. The consequences will be different for different types of economic actors, which pursue specific interests, or functions (after Al Fortes): (1) households strive for survival; (2) formal sector firms cut costs for extra-profit; (3) small businesses cut costs for providing development. All three types have equal access to the resources provided by the National Priority Project. Supporting the 1st function corresponds to the task of keeping geographically immobile rural population socially secure; 2nd function - the redistribution of added value from agro-producers to upper stairs of the «economy pyramid», which is rather incompatible with Project 176Summaries rhetoric on raising the production and living standards of the rural population; 3rd function directly corresponds to the NPP aims of development.