Соціально-економічний аспект лісогосподарського землекористування

The scientific article is devoted to the analysis of the impact of Russian military invasion of Ukraine on the ecological state of forests and the socioeconomic state of forestry. Special attention is paid to the issue of wages in the forestry industry and its impact on employee motivation and business efficiency. The authors emphasize that even before the invasion, Ukraine’s economy needed reforms in the sphere of labor payments, since the existing deformations turned wages into a kind of «social assistance». The article also examines the structure and dynamics of forestry workers’ wages in the context of inflation and the tax burden. The conducted analysis shows that the nominal increase in salaries does not compensate for losses from inflation, which leads to social instability and inhibits the development of the industry. Special attention is paid to fiscal mechanisms, such as rent for special use of forest resources and land tax. The article emphasizes the need to eliminate double taxation and reduce the tax burden to ensure the effective functioning of forestry. The authors conclude that the existing fiscal mechanisms are outdated and do not correspond to market conditions, which requires reform of the taxation system to improve the socio economic condition of the industry and increase the real wages of employees. Measures adopted by the state in the form of setting the minimum wage level are insufficient to improve the socioeconomic condition of the industry. Such measures can be effective only if a comprehensive approach to the specified problem is applied. At the same time, what is primarily important is not the set of relevant actions/measures, but rather their sequence: first, it is necessary to reduce the tax burden on the industry and eliminate double taxation; secondly, to direct the freed working capital to increase the real wages of employees. Thus, the increase in the minimum wage will not be due to the devaluation of the national currency or the increase in the prices of goods and services by enterprises (decrease in the purchasing power of the population and the increase in inflation), but due to the saved funds. The need to improve the socio economic condition of forest farms by increasing the wages of industry workers and reforming the existing fiscal mechanism is substantiated. It was established that the wages of workers in the industry, taking into account inflation, in the period from 2019 to 2023 increased by only 30%.