Efficiency of the North-West cluster of Russia

The transport system is an important component of the socio-economic development of the regions, which ensures the movement of people and goods, creating and maintaining economic ties. It acquires a special role in border areas, such as the North-Western Federal District, which borders a number of European countries and has several international transport corridors. To improve the efficiency of the transport system in 2020, a transport and logistics cluster was created in the North-Western Federal District, whose activities are aimed at increasing the efficiency of the transport system of the macroregion. However, currently there are no studies on its role in the development of transport in this federal district. Therefore, the purpose of the article was to evaluate the efficiency of this cluster. The following indicators were used for the assessment: change in the revenue of enterprises belonging to the cluster; tax revenues to the regional and federal budgets; change in the profit of enterprises belonging to the cluster; change in the share of exports of transport services. Their analysis allowed us to conclude that this cluster is ineffective. One of the reasons for this is the insufficient consolidation of enterprises, i.e. there are no enterprises connected, for example, with international seaports in the cluster. Therefore, to improve the efficiency of the cluster, it was proposed to ensure the share of enterprises registered in the NWFD to 90%; reduce the income tax to 15% for these enterprises for the first 5 years and leave it at the same level in case they implement infrastructure proyects; include other transport enterprises in the cluster to ensure efficient distribution of cargo flows and inclusion of all enterprises in multimodal transportation systems.