THE PRODUCTIVITY OF RESOURCES – PARTS OF THE NATIONAL WEALTH – AS A BASIC DETERMINANT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The global nature and growing topicality of the issues of sustainable development require broad generalized analytical studies and conclusions, and special importance in this context belongs to the productivity of resources in a broad sense as capital – part of the national wealth (NW) involved in the economic activity. The purpose of this research is to study the principles of determination of productivity of resources as components of the national wealth to improve the formation and implementation of sustainable development strategy and to identify areas of increasing resource efficiency. \nThe author provides calculations of resource productivity as a ratio of GDP and total amount of resources – components of national wealth – which reveals that the highest among the researched countries in 2005 this ratio was in China (8.99 %), Norway (7.63 %), Russia (7.30 %) and India (7.23 %), and the lowest it was in Greece (5.50 %). Remarkable is the fact that the value of this indicator in Ukraine in 2005 (6.24 %) was almost identical with its average values in OECD high-income countries (6.30 %) and in the group of countries with low and middle income (6.43 %). Small difference in the productivity of national wealth in countries is due to the fact that the amount of wealth was estimated by experts of the World Bank as the present value of sustainable consumption and greater volumes of it provide a higher level of GDP per capita consumption. Not less important is the performance of individual components of the national wealth. Calculations, carried out by a similar approach (by determining the percentage of GDP and national wealth elements), revealed that in almost all the researched countries (except Brazil, Russia and India) the largest among the components of NW in 2005 was the performance of natural capital. The highest GDP level relative to the available natural capital in 2005 was produced in the UK, where this proportion was 615.4 % and Germany (586.8 %) and the lowest values were in Russia \n(17.0 %) and Ukraine (26.5 %). In general one can say that in more developed countries, the productivity of natural capital is larger, and the productivity of intangible capital is lower. However, in the context of definite countries, both more and less developed, in terms of components of national wealth, the intangible capital productivity is the lowest, including Ukraine, where it amounted to 11.8 % in 2005. The only exception is Russia, where the natural capital was the least productive in 2005 (17 %), and produced capital and urban land were the most productive (30.1 %). The productivity of water and energy resources in Ukraine is very low compared to other countries. In calculations of resources profitableness as an additional important indicator of the effectiveness of their use on the macrolevel, volumes of rent should be used as profits and amounts of resources spent during the year (the cost of their depletion during the year) should be used as costs. Calculations, performed by this method, revealed high fluctuations of the mineral resources profitableness. Dynamics and profitability ratio of energy resources in Ukraine and other countries, calculated on the basis of an identical algorithm as the ratio of the volume of energy cost of rent and resource depletion, were much more homogeneous. In most of the countries, in particular, Ukraine, Poland, Russia, India, South Africa, Greece, China and the United States, the amount of energy profitability in 2011 was within the range of 140 – 160.5 %. \nThe problem of increasing the productivity of resources in the world as a whole and in Ukraine in particular, should be solved comprehensively on all kinds of resources that are part of the national wealth (human and natural resource potential, fixed capital, financial capital elements that influence the amount of national wealth, social potential and environmental capital) considering the distribution of national wealth on capital and untapped potential. And in the perspective the mechanism of productivity measurement should be improved based on the data on the contribution of each resource factor in the production of GDP and the size of use of resource potential and rates of volumes of all capital types. The system approach to enhancing the balance in development and productivity of resources – components of national wealth – will promote a solid foundation for sustainable development and the creation of a new quality of economic growth.