TechnoNICOL President Sergey Kolesnikov says conditions for doing business in Russia are better than in Italy
The press center Novosti Biznesa (Business News) and the All-Russia Public Organization Delovaya Rossiya (Business Russia) held the press conference “Russian Business. Results of the year”. The event was assisted by leaders of Delovaya Rossiya and representatives of Russia’s largest companies, among them the TechnoNICOL president and General Council presidium member of Delovaya Rossiya Sergey Kolesnikov, the Vice-President of Delovaya Rossiya Nikolay Ostarkov, the President of JSC Sovfracht, the presidium member of Delovaya Rossiya Dmitry Purim and the Director General of the Institute of economic and social research, member of Delovaya Rossiya General council Aleksey Ryabinin.
According to the participants of the press event, today the Russian economy has reached a turning point, at which the subsequent trajectory — economic growth or long-lasting stagnation — depends on skilled collaboration of business and authorities and the choice of correct management decisions. Low inflation level, declining administrative pressure and commitment of public authorities to improve the investment climate have a positive influence on the entrepreneurial activity. “Our enterprises are situates in various countries of the world and today we can see that Russia is more comfortable for doing business than Italy”, assumed the President of TechnoNICOL Sergey Kolesnikov.
Nevertheless, a vast number of unsolved problems persist. They hamper the diversification of the Russia’s economic structure, consecutive development of small and medium business, growth in investments. “Money is the blood of the economy. Today it is impossible to build industrial enterprises on borrowed means. The average capital yield in the manufacturing sector is about 10% per year. With luck, a bank loan can be contracted at the rate of 12%. Therefore, a businessman won’t be able to get profit and finally has to face losses”, stated Sergey Kolesnikov. “Another crucial issue is negative attitude towards entrepreneurs among the government establishment and the population. Businessperson is declared guilty a priori. Another factor is constant change of legislation. And finally, the quantity of administrative checks is not diminishing”.
However, the entrepreneurs are aiming at progressive advances of their dialogue with public authorities and come up with regular initiatives, which do not require serious changes of the whole interaction system and can significantly improve the conditions of doing business in Russia. In particular, an important issue for all manufacturing and logistic companies is the restriction on vehicle’s affordable axle load during springtime as part of the so-called road drying. Over the past two years, the restrictions of the maximum weight have not been introduced on Federal highways. Still, such resolutions were issued by regional authorities, and these are valid on regional and local roads. Prescriptions of regional authorities say that the permissible vehicle axle limit is
Another important issue affecting the conditions of doing business in our country is the requirement to conduct tax inspections of contractors. “Over the past period, the tax authorities have been practicing an approach which violates interests of diligent taxpayers, acting the following way: even if the supplier of the supplier has not paid tax, the buyer of the buyer (the taxpayer) has demonstrated negligence. Therefore, the payment assistance and expenses are taken away from the taxpayer only because the contractor of the contractor has features of shadow company. We have no opportunity to check the contractors’ counterparties. The life and entrepreneurial activity have multiple forms, and the creation of excessive diligence criteria list when choosing suppliers is objectively impossible”, said Sergey Kolesnikov. “We suggest to change the approach of tax authorities, that is not to take away from taxpayers the rights for the whole sum of assistance and expenses of the bargain and shift the responsibility for the tax sum (tax benefit), which has not been paid in the chain of deals, to the tax beneficiary, as European practice does. The taxpayer should not respond for fictional organizations, if these are not his own crony structures”.
The representatives of the largest Russian companies stated at the conference that today the key request of business is not to interfere. “We constantly face newly adopted laws, new tariffs, such as the Platon system, suggested repressive amendments to the Administrative Offences Code. These factors make the system unstable and create negative attitude of national and foreign businesses towards working conditions of our country and, consequently, the perspective of dynamic growth. Our economy should grow by
About TechnoNICOL
TechnoNICOL is one the leading international producers of reliable and effective construction materials. The company offers innovative products and technologies that combine international experience and solutions of proper research centers. The company collaborates with design institutions and architectural bureaus, which enable us to react to ever-changing consumer expectations quickly and flexibly.
Presently, the TechnoNICOL Corporation integrates 51 production sites in seven countries worldwide (Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, The Check Republic, Italy, the United Kingdom), 5 research centers, 18 training centers and 21 representative offices in 17 countries. Headquarters are located in Russia, Poland, Italy, China and India. The company exports materials to over 80 countries worldwide. In 2014, the industrial complex showed revenue of 56 billion rubles, which increased to 64 billion rubles in 2015.