Financial Infrastructure for the Development of the Russian Far East: An Effective Response to the 2022 Crisis

Abstract

For many years, the scientific community has been discussing the prospects for creating an international financial center in the Russian Far East. Intensive socio-economic development of the macroregion was planned, as export-oriented and based on the outstripping growth of foreign investment. Special legal regimes for doing business should have significantly increased the investment attractiveness of the Russian Far East for investors from the Asia-Pacific region. Russia’s financial infrastructure at the macrolevel was ready to process a much larger volume of foreign investment than entered the Russian economy. The developed exchange market of stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, commodities, and derivatives was to take an active part in the transformation of portfolio investments into direct investments. Banks, subsidiaries of Japanese, South Korean and Chinese financial institutions, were developed in the Russian Far East. Business practices and corporate procedures aimed at aligning the interests of foreign investors and Russian corporations were improved. However, the political crisis of 2022, associated with the introduction of international sanctions against the Russian financial infrastructure, crossed out plans to create such a center. A fundamentally new research task has appeared – to justify the creation of a regional financial center that would ensure the advanced socio-economic development of the Russian Far East with the entire range of financial infrastructure services in the absence of systemic interaction with foreign financial organizations. This task involves understanding what mechanisms should be created and on what principles this center should function, which financial instruments and corporate mechanisms from the existing ones can be used at the stage of its launch