Business celebrates Russian Entrepreneurship Day

On May 26th “Expocentre” hosted “Russian Entrepreneurship Day”. The program of the day included business meetings and workshops, panel and strategic sessions, discussion platforms and business fair and the First Russian Congress of innovation infrastructure.

Plenary session “Developing production we develop the country” was the second session on the agenda after the one on the problems of interaction between small businesses and state-owned Power Lunch companies. “Developing production we develop the country” session was dedicated to the development of small and medium-sized manufacturing businesses, to the quality of Russian goods and services, as well as to training of workers for the production sector and to enhancing the prestige of working in business sphere. Sergey Katyrin, RF CCI president, moderated the meeting.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, legislative and executive branches of the government, banking sector, including the Sberbank’s representatives, public organizations executives as well as representatives of the companies nominated for the Gold Mercury Award who have arrived from different regions of the country. The official award ceremony was scheduled on the evening of the same day.

Representatives of successful regional businesses shared their vision on the development of their companies and domestic businesses in general; talked about which steps they are anticipating the State to take and which steps they are willing to take themselves.
Thus, the audience of plenary session agreed on the need of administrative burden reduction for successful and rapid development of domestic small and medium-sized businesses. This statement was confirmed by the results of voting where the article of “pressure reduction coming from the State control and supervisory bodies on business” established itself as a leader. “In reality, the supervisory authorities should be partners for business community, they shall help business pointing to its shortcomings, but they absolutely should not set unreasonable penalties”, – said Alexander Kalinin, president of the NGO “OPORA RUSSIA”.

Business representatives also expect that more loyal credit conditions are to be established; first of all the reduction of the key interest rate on loans is expected. Such a wish was also expressed by Anatoly Aksakov, the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Innovative Development and Entrepreneurship.

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Georgy Kalamanov noted that to facilitate the access to loan finance for SMEs the Industrial Development Fund reduces minimum volume of the loans. The important task is to help small manufacturing businesses to expand their participation in import phase-out and in production of goods for foreign markets. RF CCI president Sergey Katyrin reminded the audience that the development of such companies benefits from participation in international exhibitions: it is also a common place in the developed countries around the world to compensate participation fees. According to Mr. Katyrin the Ministry has developed a matching programme and expects government's support in this regard.

The session ended with the discussion of topical issue, e.g. the lack of skilled staff for the development of productive entrepreneurship.

According to the voting results the main factor to enhance the prestige of blue-collar jobs was the financial incentives for businessmen engaged in teaching and training. Sergey Ermakov, CEO of “SantehUral” TH LLC, acted as a representative of socially responsible business. His company is the initiator and organizer of the contest of professional skills among plumbers “The Best Plumber. Urals Cup”. The contest aims at supporting the State policy of promotion of blue-collar jobs and formation of their new positive image.