The article is dedicated to the necessity for a scientifically substantiated approach to the identification of the regional economic need in import substitution products. The authors have pointed out the peculiarities of the import substitution process, such as, for instance: two-fold direction and mid-term character which predetermine the research types necessary to assess the economic needs. This article also contains a method proposed by the authors to identify the existing amounts of effective demand on the import products, on the one hand, and persistent tendencies in the demand development that, in their turn, enable to identify critical amounts of import demand, on the other hand. Through the example of the Krasnoyarsk region, the authors have presented the approbation results of the first stage of this method: evaluation of the actual degree of the regional economy dependence on import products.