A dynamic field

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 849.

The development and current conditions of small enterprises in Russia

The development of small and medium-sized businesses in Russia is much slower than in other developed countries, but nevertheless we can see positive trends. The Russian Federation is slowly but surely moving through a complex path of the development of entrepreneurship.

As shown in Table 2 according to the latest data for 2013 the number of small enterprises was 2,063,100 and from 2001 there is positive dynamics of this indicator. You can't say the same thing about the average number of employees and on investments in fixed assets. Until 2008 there was the same positive trend for these two indicators, but the crisis has affected the activity of small enterprises and, despite an overall increase in their amount other indicators first began to decline. The shift in the opposite direction is observed only from 2011, indicating a gradual withdrawal from the crisis. This table includes only small businesses, because the legislative definition of the subjects of medium-sized businesses in the Russian Federation appeared only in January 1, 2008. In terms of sectoral structure for many years a leading position among small and medium-sized enterprises is taken by wholesale and retail trade and repair, real estate and rental. From Fig.1 we can see that in 2013, the distribution remains the same.

With regard to investment in fixed assets, there are changes in the structure of their distribution in 2013, but minor compared to 2007. So, in 2007, the predominant share of investments carried out in the construction (31.9%) , and in second place were real estate operations, leasing and services (21.3%). In turn, in 2013 the share accounted for 28.9% of construction investments, while operations with real estate, renting and business services small businesses accounted for 23.3% .

We can observe that investments in construction decreased a little in 2013 compared to 2007.

Interestingly, the investments in the wholesale and retail trade in 2013 were only on the 5th place, while in 2007 they were on the 3rd place. (See Table 3-Appendix 1 and Table 4-Appendix 2). Unfortunately, the data for 2013 on the structure of investments in fixed assets are not available. We only know that in 2013, these investments grew and reached the level of 2010.

From 1 January 2013 the mandatory contributions for the self-employed to the Pension Fund have been doubled - from 17,208 to 35,665 rubles a year. This fact has led to a cessation of activity of many individual entrepreneurs. According to the Federal Tax Service, only for December 2012 and January 2103, 208,000 individual entrepreneurs in Russia faced bankruptcy. According to the results of the sample survey of 300 entrepreneurs who had association "Support of Russia", more than 65% of them abandoned plans to develop, half (50%) of them laid off workers, almost everywhere reduced wages. Such changes in the law don't promote the development of small businesses, they just destroy its beginnings and positive trends.