Competitors were crushed, but angry – Newspaper Kommersant No. 41 (7486) of 03/13/2023

Although the state of competition in the Russian market inspires some optimism, its growth continues to slow down, according to the survey of small businesses by Opora Rossii. In particular, the number of company executives, individual entrepreneurs and the self-employed who consider competition “very or fairly strong” is declining (54.9% in 2023 versus 59.5% in 2020). Slightly more than half of the respondents speak of increased competition – 51.3% (versus 59.1% in 2020) – these are primarily entrepreneurs whose business is related to trade, tourism, healthcare and transport services, where there are traditionally many representatives of SMEs. This also explains the increase in competition within the sector itself, recorded in the results of the survey, notes Andrey Shubin, Executive Director of Opora Rossii: if earlier large-scale entrepreneurs were considered the main competitor for small and medium-sized businesses, then this year (due to shrinking markets and liberating niches) in respondents equally often named large and small businesses as competitors.

Compared to 2020, the number of entrepreneurs who believe that the competitive environment or government policy to maintain it is deteriorating has also decreased (see chart). Mr. Shubin connects this “to a greater extent” with a change in the attitude of business towards the work of the FAS. In 2023, the indicators of trust in the procedure for protecting the rights of entrepreneurs in the antimonopoly authorities doubled (from 27.7% in 2020 to 56.7%), as well as appeals against the actions of FAS employees (from 24.6% to 51.5 %). It should be noted that this is partly due to the fact that the service remains almost the only pro-competitive government agency, in particular, opposing the Ministry of Finance on the issue of extending the practice of non-competitive public procurement from a single supplier (for more details, see Kommersant dated January 23 and September 23, 2022) .

However, some improvement in the competitive environment can hardly be considered significant so far, Opora Rossii states, explaining this by the emergence of new barriers to doing business. In 2023, in addition to traditional complaints about high taxes (noted by 39.3% of respondents) and instability of legislation (37.2%), their list was supplemented by the loss of personnel (38.1%) and suppliers (26.8%), gaps logistics links (16.2%), difficulties in purchasing foreign goods, services and raw materials (26.3%) and settlements with foreign counterparties (9.4%).

Christina Borovikova