The Second Russian Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Forum ends in St. Petersburg

On June 15, in St. Petersburg, within the scope of SPIEF 2016, the second Russian Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Forum was held. The Forum’s co-organizer was the All-Russian Non-Governmental Organization OPORA Russia.

The organizers of the event were the Roscongress Foundation and the All-Russian Non-Governmental Organization OPORA Russia, and its partner was Federal Corporation for the Developmentof Small and Medium-Sized Businesses.

Alexander Kalinin, President of the All-Russian Non-Governmental Organization OPORA Russia, stressed the importance of the event and noted: “Small business has always been the foundation for development of the economic and today it may be said that finding growth points for the demand for domestic output is an effective solution to uplifting business in Russia.”

This year, the focus was on improving the tax legislation and legal support for businessmen, making financing more accessible, improving crediting and the quality of state regulation in the SME sphere. These matters need to be resolved in order to reach the goals set out in the Russian SME Development Strategy up to 2030, which was presented at the Forum.

Alexander Braverman, CEO of the Federal Corporation for the Developmentof Small and Medium-Sized Businesses, spoke about the main spheres of activity of the SME Corporation, including expanding the participatory share in purchases by major companies with state participation, providing businessmen with financial, property and legal support. He noted that, as of June 6, 2016, the planned total volume of purchases from SME amounted to RUB 519.6 billion, the average purchase share being 26.14%, which is 2.6 times more than the normative set share (10%), and that the range of purchases had been expanded to 94.2 thousand positions.

“As a result of this work, the total volume of agreements between major customers and SME amounts to RUB 348.3 billion. The anticipated volume of such agreements by the end of 2016 is RUB 1 trillion,” according to Alexander Braverman. “We are now seeing a rising level of involvement of major customers in work with small and medium-sized business, together with a transfer from supplies of simple goods and services to the high tech sector.”

Over 400 people took part in the Forum, including public officials, businessmen and experts from Russia, Finland, Latin America, the Republic of Haiti and Suriname, Argentina, among them:

Boris Titov, Russian Presidential Commissioner for Entrepreneurs’ Rights

Alexander Braverman, CEO of the Federal Corporation for the Developmentof Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

Anatoly Aksakov, Chair of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Innovative Development, and Entrepreneurship

Alexander Kalinin, President of the All-Russian Non-Governmental Organization OPORA Russia

Siglien Burleson, Minister of Trade and Industry of the Republic of Suriname

Jessy C. Petit-Frère, Minister of Commerce and Industry of the Republic of Haiti

Rafael Enrique González Aleman, General Director, Under Secretary of Commerce and Investments, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Argentina

Sergey Movchan, Vice Governor of St. Petersburg

Jaana Rekolainen, CEO, Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce

Dmitry Tulin, First Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation

 

The key Forum event was the Plenary Session ‘Small Businesses in High Demand’, the agenda for which included pressing issues facing SME, such as expanding the opportunities for sale of SME output, making goods more competitive, and increasing investments sin SME.

The SME Forum encompassed signing of an Agreement on Cooperation between Uniastrum Bank and All-Russian Non-Governmental Organization OPORA Russia. The Agreement covered important aspects of cooperation within the scope of implementing joint projects and programmes, including ones for encouraging female enterprise in Russia.

The Forum business programme included a Plenary Session ‘Tools for Growing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise in Latin America and the Caribbean’, at which public officials and heads of leading companies of Russia, Latin America and the Caribbean discussed the most promising spheres of cooperation, considered the role of SME in the national economies and shared experience of government and private support for SME.

The subject of small and medium-sized business will be continued on June 16 at SPIEF 2016 during the session ‘a New Ecosystem for Russian Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises’, where the participants will consider aspects of expanding the entrepreneurial class, supporting and realising the potential of SME and more.

Contact details: Natalya Cherezova, 

mob.: +7 (960) 240 0038,

Email:

06/21/2016