Cross-Country comparison in investment competitiveness of industrial enterprises

During 2008 crisis fixed capital investment in Russian economy dropped significantly: investments in fixed prices slowed down by 15,6% between 2009 and 2008. For industrial enterprises decrease was even large about 17,2%. While GDP in Russia in 2012-2015 surpassed pre-crisis level, fixed capital investments are still remaining below pre-crisis level. Deterioration in fixed capital at the end of 2014 almost reached 50%, while in 2000 it was only 40%, which requires large renewal of fixed capital and demands rapid growth in investments. Thereby current level of investments in economy is not sufficient not only for renewal of fixed capital, but also for maintaining capital on pre-crisis levels. Such low-level investments of industrial companies can be explained by lag in investment competitiveness between Russia and Western Europe countries. Based on EFIGE and IIMS data this article dwells upon the analysis of manufacturing companies’ investment competitiveness in Western European countries (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy) and Russia, including the inter-state differences in the fixed capital investment financing structure. Investment competitiveness is measures by investment to sales ratio. The discrepancies of the specific investment quotes between small-, medium-, and large-sized businesses have been discovered by the simultaneous equations system. Factors leading to investment incompetitiveness have been found and explained.