Small business support

The Government of the Russian Federation has developed a list of instructions to the ministries, aimed at supporting of small business and private enterprises. The work was carried out on the basis of the May report of B. Titov, the authorized at the president to protect the entrepreneurs rights, to V. Putin. 

The main part of orders touch the regulation of government procurements (under the 44-FL). To the end of October the Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Finance and the Federal Antimonopoly Service are set a task of developing new guidelines for the formation of procurement lots with non-inclusion of unrelated goods and services. The current requirement eliminates the large number of small, specialized firms from bidding.

Besides it was ordered to consider an exemption of the requirements to secure an application for medium-sized companies already working on government contracts over the last three years (if the contract amount does not exceed 3 mln RUB).

In order to attract a significant number of small companies for bids, small businesses need to see financial sense of participation in the procurement. For this it was proposed to increase the maximum size of the contract price for suppliers in this category from the current 20 mln RUB to a more substantial sum. 

Another section is devoted to the definition of the cadastral value. The Ministry of Economy was ordered to adjust the work of the commission for disputes on the cadastral value. Now it is required to provide the appraiser’s conclusion, which often costs several million rubles. However the Commission often does not take this conclusion into account and assesses the object on its own. It is proposed to cancel the obligation to provide a report, or to oblige the Commission to accept that conclusion.

The list contains instructions to the Central Bank and Ministry of Finance to consider measures of lending support to small businesses. In particular, on reduction of risk factors of such loans, and the introduction of micro-loan securitization*. 

*Securitization - financing of certain assets through the issuance of securities. The word comes from the English «securities».