Subject. I consider the price policy of the State in conditions of domination of extractive industries, natural monopolies, and financial uncertainty in the economy.
Objectives. The purpose is to provide a modern concept of price as a market instrument, where prices act as objects of management, financial and economic regulators, and tools to manage the economy.
Methods. I employ methods of economic analysis and synthesis, comparison, scientific abstraction, and other methods of scientific knowledge.
Results. The paper critically examines the State policy in the field of pricing, and determines the specifics of price regulation for natural monopolies’ products, for the purpose of effective functioning of competitive markets, decline in prices, and influence of ruble exchange rate dynamics on wages, pensions, benefits and payments, as well as on relationships between domestic and world prices under financial uncertainty of commodity markets.
Conclusions. The main goal of the State pricing policy should be the development of an economic mechanism for its implementation as a means of direct increase in the Russian economy efficiency, rather than a focus on domestic resource-based industries as drivers of its development. Government regulation and financial impact on prices, as well as other forms of interference with market pricing, should encourage and expand healthy competition in the form of subsidies and subventions to new, but yet weak producers in the monopolized sector; subsidize substitutes for products manufactured by monopolists; subsidize the costs of import-substituting and export-oriented enterprises, etc.