The Instruments of Sustainable Development Financing: Trend Analysis and Search for Opportunities

The article is dedicated to the issues of the instruments’ development of sustainable development financing. The analysis of special financial instruments in the aspect of instruments’ groups of project/corporate financing, stock market, loan capital market, and insurance market has been conducted in order to identify main trends and opportunities for further development; in particular, crowdfunding platforms are extremely advanced instruments. Based on the analysis of the statistical data, the article states that instruments of sustainable development financing have major potential on the financial market under the instability of economic situation. The objective of the article is to define the development opportunities for instruments of sustainable development financing based on the review and systematization of national and foreign literature and the analysis of the large amount of statistical data, as well as to develop recommendations to improve the methodological support of sustainable development financing. The article analyzes support programs and measures for development of sustainable development financing and considers a number of regulatory entitlements regulating this process. The analysis of the entrepreneurial sector of Saint Petersburg in the context of types of economic activity, including the dynamics of financial performance of economic entities and formed gross regional product, is presented. The results show that wholesale and retail trade occupy leading positions, both by quantity and by cumulative turnover. And the leading positions, according to ESG ranking of Russian companies, are occupied by oil and gas industry. However, it should not be forgotten that the main type of activity for many companies in this sphere is trade. Opportunities for the development of financing instruments have been identified and recommendations for improving the methodological support of sustainable development financing have been developed, including the need for improvement of the system of companies’ evaluation during registration on crowdfunding platforms, expanding expansionary and supportive measures and the use of artificial intelligence in finance, etc.