Development of the financial mechanism in social sectors in the context of public finance reform

   Introduction. Preservation of the population, improvement of well-being and well-being of people are among the long-term priorities of national development in the Russian Federation. Solving a wide range of tasks within the framework of this national goal requires the involvement of a huge amount of financial, primarily budgetary, resources, and, consequently, systematic monitoring and evaluation in various areas: rationality, efficiency, sufficiency, compliance with the socio-demographic structure of society, accessibility and quality of services provided.

   Purpose. Identification of key trends in the modernization of public finances in the social sphere in the following areas: improvement of the mechanism of state (municipal) assignments and development of competitive mechanisms for the provision of state (municipal) services.

   Materials and methods. In preparing the article, we used statistical data on the volume and directions of expenditures of the consolidated budget of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, on the number and structure of organizations in the social sphere, published by the Federal State Statistics Service; data from the unified portal of the budget system of the Russian Federation "Electronic Budget"; the results of a sociological study by the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation "The effectiveness of the implementation of state (municipal) services in the social sphere"; regulatory legal acts; scientific articles. The methods of statistical analysis, expert assessments, and a systematic approach are used.

   Results. The study revealed the main results of the implementation of measures to improve the efficiency and quality of services in the social sphere, which are financially supported by budgetary funds. At the same time, the problems of insufficient budget financing, the need for additional budget resources to achieve the national goal of improving the quality of life of citizens and solving the problems of increasing accessibility and improving the quality of healthcare, education, and creating a modern comfortable infrastructure are shown.

   Conclusions. Currently, building an optimal system for the provision and financial support of social services requires not so much instrumental measures aimed at improving the allocation of available funds as attracting additional amounts of budget financing.

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