Small Russian businesses will not be able to surpass large oil and gas or metallurgical companies in terms of contribution to GDP, but everyone must have comparable tax and financial capabilities. Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sberbank Anatoly Popov stated this at SPIEF at the session “Promotion of Quality Growth: Strategies and Tools for SMEs”.
According to him, any Russian entrepreneur should have the opportunity to start a business in India, China or any other country.
Discussion participants discussed how small and medium-sized businesses are changing the Russian economy and what additional tools they need for development. According to the All-Russian SME public organization “OPORA RUSSIA”, since 2018 the number of small businesses in the country has increased from 5.9 to 6.5 million. The number of entrepreneurs exceeded 25 million. The contribution of SMEs to Russia’s GDP increased from 18 trillion rubles to 30 trillion rubles.
As Popov emphasized, small and medium-sized businesses have difficulty accessing finance. According to him, the Central Bank’s key interest and bank interest rates are currently quite high, but this does not help SMEs to implement their long-term programs.
“Since last fall, there have been nine IPOs in the market in which companies raised equity capital. “Literally on the eve of the opening of SPIEF, the final collection of applications ended: a small company collected 3.2 billion rubles,” he said.
Popov emphasized that the positive reaction of investors and the market to this trend has become noticeable.
“There was a view that investors were mostly individuals and often unskilled. However, for example, in the last IPO, almost half of the demand was provided by institutional investors. This shows that there is demand for small businesses. This means they will be able to find equity and other sources of financing,” added the deputy chairman of the board of directors of Sberbank.
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Source: Gazeta
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