Sergey Naryshkin meets with representatives of the entrepreneurial community

On May 25, State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin met with representatives of the entrepreneurial community.

Opening the meeting, Mr. Naryshkin congratulated its participants on the upcoming Day of Russian Entrepreneurship: “This is not just a holiday, but also a good occasion to discuss the economic situation, problems relevant to domestic business and the state of field-specific legislation.”

The state of the national economy is well-known to representatives of the business community while important replacement, accelerated innovation-driven development and industrial modernization require the active involvement of entrepreneurs.

Mr. Naryshkin underscored the importance of ongoing professional dialogue between business and government: “This is our direct obligation as part of the law-making process. I believe any initiatives to alter the business, trade and taxation landscape must be subjected to the regulator’s scrutiny.”

Insufficient efforts to improve the federal, regional and municipal monitoring, undefined parameters of business inspection frequency and justification may provoke corruption risks and undermine the operations of private business.

The State Duma Speaker emphasized that a special accent in parliament needs to be placed on the expert evaluation of draft bills – a number of councils have been established; parliamentary hearings are held on most relevant topics, along with round tables and ‘government hours’.

Boris Titov, Presidential Commissioner for Entrepreneurs’ Rights, referred to a high level of interaction between the entrepreneurial community and the State Duma. He noted that a report had been prepared, in which more than 200 initiatives by entrepreneurs were formulated: “Top on that list is the humanization of the criminal and criminal procedure legislations in the sphere of economic offences,” noted Mr. Titov.

Alexei Repik, President of the All Russia Public Organization Business Russia, stood up for widening the circle of entrepreneurial community as a whole. He is positive that “the authorities are ready to promote entrepreneurship.” But in his words, serious administrative barriers still stand in the way of business and there are “instances of administrative pressure on business.”

Alexander Kalinin, President of the All Russia Public Organization Opora Russia, mentioned positive dynamics in legislative support of the entrepreneurial activity. He suggested that amendments to the business activity regulatory framework should pass the procedure of their regulatory impact assessment. Furthermore, he proposed to simplify the mechanisms of investing into large projects so that “businesses might pool their funds to invest them in worthy undertakings.” He also noted that the liberalization of the taxation regime for business would help many businesses survive “stagnation in national economy”.

Anatoly Aksakov, Chairman of the Committee for Economic Policy, confirmed the readiness to continue constructive collaboration with the business community and spoke about the legislative part of the works aimed at creating the Unified Institute of Small Business Development which, he estimated, would be completed during the spring session of the State Duma proceedings.

Andrei Makarov, Chairman of the Committee for Budget and Taxes, is certain that while the relevant tax legislation is in need of further refinement, it is instrumental in productive efforts made by entrepreneurs.

Concluding the meeting, Mr. Naryshkin said that following its results a list of tasks by State Duma Speaker will be published, aimed at the addition development of specific draft bills and consolidation of the Duma practice of expert support and monitoring of the law application.

Press Service of State Duma of the Russian Federation

05/25/2015