Развитие малого и среднего бизнеса в условиях современной экономики

• The possibility to close a contract with a single supplier, with the approval of the controlling organ, if there are no other bids submitted to the auction 4. Support for socially oriented non-profit organizations, organizations for persons with disabilities, and small business in Russia
• No less than 15 percent of all procurements should be made from small business in Russia 5. Creation of economic stimuli for innovation
• A two-part competition with limited participation for complicated or innovative products, such as scientific or creative products
• The first stage of the competition will allow competing suppliers to conduct scientific research or design work for a proposal. The customer will then specify the procurement specifications, considering the proposals of the qualifying participants, and then will determine the ultimate supplier in the second part of the competition.

2.2. Advantages of small and medium business development in Russia

Having embarked on the road of market reforms, Russia must define its strategy with respect to the nongovernmental sector of the economy—national private, foreign, individual, collective, big, and small. A correctly formulated plan of action implies conscious formation of conditions for the operation of economic entities, which ensure the long-term profitability of business, mobilization of its investment resources at the micro level, and rapid progress in general.
An authoritative and competent government is better for business than a weak one. A high level of social tension is always regarded as a risk factor. Ethnic and territorial conflicts do nothing to attract foreign business capital; and in such conditions national capital looks for a profitable place to invest abroad.
In any country, business activity is organized and controlled by the state, proceeding from the priorities of the country’s economic development. The legal framework sets the degree of freedom for the businessman and molds his behavior. For example, if tax legislation is faulty, he looks for ways to evade taxes rather than ways to minimize tax payments within the framework of the law. The state should create a taxation system that makes timely payment of taxes more advantageous than nonpayment. The overall instability of economic legislation has the same effect, that is, it makes businessmen less inclined to obey the law.
The population’s attitude toward market reforms is also very important. As it becomes stronger, the market is failing to create new public structures or form a pro-market public opinion. So the state should pay close attention to and try to influence public consciousness.
Innovation is one of the most important areas in the development of small business. Russia’s small business undoubtedly has an innovation component. It can be clearly discerned in commerce and services, in small production and construction. But the gist of this innovation lies in active incorporation and adaptation of foreign technology and materials. Small business is a kind of sponge that soaks up and disseminates production and business ideas in the local market that have already been successfully implemented in other parts of the world.
The situation with scientific-technical small venture business in Russia leaves something to be desired. And this is the most important component of contemporary innovative small business. Russian scientific-technical innovative small business is insignificant in scope and operates primarily under direct contracts from foreign companies or transnational corporations that try to economize by working with cheap researchers. The small number of venture funds in Russia that are engaged in financing this activity have so far essentially been fully operating on foreign capital.
On the whole, the negative trend toward a contraction in the sphere of scientific-technical small business is caused by:
the lack of domestic demand for scientific-technical production;
the low profitability of scientific-technical activity in small business;
the lack of interest of big Russian capital in scientific-technical innovation activity on the whole and in small innovation business in particular;
the high ambiguity of economic activity in the Russian market.
As of the present, a market for servicing small businesses and, correspondingly, the main institutions of this servicing have already developed in Russia’s leading regions.
The Russian system of small business support must be placed under strict public control. This primarily means control by public associations in small business. This requires that the government play a mandatory role in their support.5
The ubiquitous criminalization of the economy, which is becoming increasingly ensconced, is having a negative effect on small business in Russia. The prevalent share of the shadow sector of the economy continues to be a distinguishing feature of small business. It must be said that the state system of small business support that has developed in Russia is on the whole equivalent to the current
Russian institutional macro environment. Therefore, this system is failing to stimulate improvements in the business climate and help small business to open up lucrative opportunities for itself in the national economy.
Small shadow business is unable to give large bribes to big bureaucrats. It circles around the many middle- and low-ranking officials who are satisfied with small but regular extortions. According to experts, the total amount of such extortions, although it lags behind the amount of bribe-taking in big business, is still very high.
The current state system of business regulation is pushing small business into the shadow economy.
The main reasons for small enterprises retreating into the Russian shadow economy are lack of protection of property rights, corruption, weakness of the law-enforcement system, insufficient available financial resources, lack of circulating assets and the possibility of alternative payments (cash, barter, and so on), the coercive nature of leasing relations, administrative-bureaucratic barriers, underdevelopment of the market infrastructure, the heavy tax burden, and so on.
An obvious reason for Russian small businesses becoming widely incorporated into the shadow economy is the unsophisticated nature of the regulatory-legal basis of entrepreneurship.6 There are too many gaps and imprecise formulations in the laws that allow for double and triple interpretations. The economic laws are random, fragmentary, and often contradict each other. This kind of legislation is a perfect Klondike for bureaucrats to procure unearned rent money. Shadow revenue of small business is primarily used as follows:
for the enterprise’s current activity (illegal payment in cash, office lease payments, paying off business partners, and so on);
for personal use;
for paying state controllers, tax officers, and security and law-enforcement officers, going through various authorization procedures, and so on (bribes);
for paying racketeers who provide “protection.”
The personal safety of businessmen is becoming an especially urgent issue as the economy becomes more criminalized. It stands to reason that this is making the business sphere less attractive for working in and forcing businessmen to look for a solution to the current situation. Some are creating their own security services, which are usually expensive and, due to the low professionalism of their employees, unreliable.
Administrative barriers in Russia are not simply one of the difficulties in small business development. They represent an entire set of complicated and contradictory relations associated with interaction between business and the government in the management structure, the main entities of which are inclined toward engaging in a constant battle for preferences. Such barriers that hinder the movement of goods, capital, and labor are bureaucrats’ main tool in countries with developing markets for obtaining high-status rent money.
Administrative barriers are usually divided into two groups: those that prevent the small businessman from gaining access to a particular commodity market or conducting particular economic operations (licensing, certification, accreditation) and those that arise due to the adoption (threat of adoption) of particular control measures over current economic activity.7
On the other hand, serious administrative barriers are arising due to the local authorities’ subjective comprehension and interpretation of legal acts, which is leading to arbitrariness and the establishment of one’s own rules for entering into business. The procedure for obtaining a license to engage in business activity is arduous and demanding, requiring not only the submission of a multitude of references, information, reports, and other documents, but also the payment of artificially high fees to register founding documents.
An important task of small business development in Russia is organizing the training and retraining of civil servants working in the small business support system.
Training personnel for small and medium business requires the following:
developing a system for teaching the basics of business activity at different levels of educational institutions;
developing a system of extended professional education for directors and specialists of current small businesses, infrastructure facilities of small business support, as well as civil servants, whose sphere of competence should include managing small business development and regulating its activity.
Solving these tasks requires:
creating an extensive network of educational institutions at the federal, regional, and municipal levels;
developing educational services for meeting the demand of different social groups (unemployed and unoccupied citizens, retired servicemen, pensioners, young people, migrants, women);
ensuring the availability of high-quality business-education for beginning and already established businessmen.
Since federal programs are not being financed by the state, the tasks aimed at improving educational services for entrepreneurship and small business are essentially not being performed. Less than a third of society’s real demand for businessmen training is satisfied.