Conference.
From Dmitry Medvedev’s opening remarks:
Conference on the implementation of roadmaps for the national entrepreneurial initiative
The national entrepreneurial initiative has become a fundamentally new programme to improve the business climate in the country. This year will see the main stage of this paramount national project come to completion. The programme’s reforms were shaped by entrepreneurs, who also monitored their subsequent implementation.
The initiative is being implemented in roadmap format and currently work is progressing on 11 such roadmaps. Among these are roadmaps for customs, tax administration, export support, urban development, power grids, competition, assessment activity, company and property rights registration, improving the overall quality of the regulatory environment, and expanding access to natural monopoly procurements for small and medium sized companies and for companies with state participation.
Regarding the broadening of access to the energy infrastructure for businesses, the time required to connect to the electricity grids has been halved in cases where there is no need to build network infrastructure, i.e., with capacity below 670 kW. Over the course of the year, connection fees for users have been reduced by 67 percent for businesses with a capacity under 150 kW. In the housing construction sector, a finite number of official approvals and endorsements has been established, regardless of the region of issue. The Government intends to trim this list even further.
The implementation of a roadmap in the customs sphere has made it possible to significantly reduce the number of documents required for customs declaration and clearance.
Regarding export support, the creation of the Russian export centre to provide support to exporters on a one-stop basis, has proven to be a key decision. RosEximBank has launched a programme to grant loans at subsidised interest rates to support the manufacturing of high-tech products. An array of activities was rolled out to simplify retail and small wholesale export trade and the procedure for submitting documents in order to confirm one’s zero interest rate VAT status was simplified.
In the registration of property rights, we have put in place an online document submission system. Registration time has been reduced to 10 working days. By this indicator, Russia ranks eighth in the World Bank’s Doing Business rating.
The procedure for the registration of new companies also has been streamlined significantly. Now this can be done online (online registration) and therefore the number of mandatory procedures to set up a business has been reduced by a factor of three.
Special attention was given to small and medium sized business. An obligatory procurement quota for state-owned companies from small firms was established at no less than 18 percent of their annual volume.
I have approved a provision whereby the Federal Corporation for the Development of Small and Medium Business will now be able to monitor the activity of regional authorities in the procurement of goods and services from small companies.
The national entrepreneurial initiative as a large-scale project to improve the business climate has materialised. This is not only our view, but also an internationally recognised one: according to well-known ratings, Russia has moved from the 120th position in 2011 for doing business to 51st this year. We are also among the top five countries that have implemented the largest number of the ease-of-doing-business measures.
