The new president has identified addressing the problems of small business as a priority issue. Dmitry Medvedev has decided to rid small business of corrupt officials, reduce rents and make establishing new companies easier. Businessmen are pleased with the initiatives, but doubt that they will be implemented unconditionally
The development of small business is one of the first issues on which the new president, Dmitry Medvedev, has focused. Yesterday, he held discussions with ministers, as a result of which the president signed a decree: "On urgent measures to eliminate administrative restrictions in carrying out entrepreneurial activity." The decree instructs the government to develop and introduce into the State Duma draft federal laws to provide increased safeguards for the rights of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs.
The measures proposed by the decree include reducing the number of inspections of small firms to one every three years, a notification procedure for registration, introducing compulsory insurance instead of licensing, privatizing rented premises on the assessment of independent experts (and not through auction) and many others.
Following the president, the Prosecutor-General's Office also announced its readiness to protect small business. "The Russian Prosecutor-General's Office will endeavour to ensure that the rights of entrepreneurs from small and medium business are observed," said the First Deputy Prosecutor-General Alexander Buksman at a press conference today. A special section for entrepreneurs whose rights have been violated will soon appear on the website of the Prosecutor-General's Office.
Entrepreneurs have called all of the proposed measures for their protection and business development necessary and important, but views differ over whether they will actually be workable.
"Vladimir Putin also addressed the issue of supporting small business at the beginning of his presidency, but nothing came of it," says Georgy Komarov, chairman of the Moscow office of the League of Freedom trade union of entrepreneurs. The vice-president of the Association of Small and Medium Business, Vladislav Korochkin, believes that now, with the transition from a commodity to an innovative economy model, small and medium enterprises will be given full support at the highest level: "This is a question of Russia's place in the world and of the sustainability of the socio-economic system." The general director of Ural-Press, Konstantin Astaf`ev, believes that the main problem for businessmen is not, as the president thinks, corruption, rental rates and poor infrastructure. Nor even the absence of a mechanism to protect property. "This is all just a corollary of Russia's main problem: widespread and militant incompetence," says Astaf`ev.
Yekaterina Shokhina
Dmitry Medvedev
Photo: AP
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