Lietuvos regionų ekonominės ir socialinės plėtros investicijų efektyvumas

Abstract

During the last decade government lacked possibilities to implement large-scale investment policy what, in its turn, resulted in the concentration of economical activity in economically active regions such as Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipeda characterized by the mostly developed infrastructure. Recently government declared a new regional policy aimed to balance the development of all country’s regions. Efficiency of the latter policy considerably depends on the distribution of means directed to the development of regions. This objective requires tackling of two problems: the determination of the level of socio-economic development of all regions and the distribution of available funds into regions proportionally to estimated underdevelopment. Currently socio-economic development of regions in the European Union has been evaluated by index of GDP per capita. Since development is a complex phenomenon it requires more complex evaluation. This objective could be achieved through the use of the following methods: evaluation taking into account sum of places, geometrical mean, sum of partial indexes, chart-analytical method, proposed complex multi-criterion index. The evaluation of the level of socio-economic development of regions using all the listed methods yielded finding that index of GDP per capita could be used only in cases when the objective is set to determine the most lagging behind and the most developed regions. In all other cases complex evaluation has been considered as more precise. The efficiency of regional policy depends on how funds have been distributed, i.e. if the relation between the development of regions and the amount of directed means is traced. Regressive analysis has shown that this relationship is inverse one: the largest amount of means has been directed to the mostly developed regions. That leads to a conclusion that regional policy being implemented is not sufficiently efficient.