Preparing the economy for the release of steam – Newspaper Kommersant No. 28 (7473) of 02/15/2023
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The authorities are ready to further ease the pressure on business and reduce the internal risks of entrepreneurs in the face of sanctions and a worsening business and investment climate. Such signals were given yesterday by the president at a meeting with judges, demanding legislative guarantees to protect entrepreneurs from unjustified criminal prosecution. Entrepreneurs themselves are already preparing new proposals for the decriminalization of economic crimes – and the chances of their registration are increasing. In the meantime, the government continues to reduce administrative pressure on business, thanks to the digitalization of public administration, relieving medium-sized companies from excessive reporting.
The authorities and business continue to discuss possible ways to reduce the burden on entrepreneurs in order to increase business and investment activity. Although the government has managed to significantly reduce administrative pressure on business by introducing a risk-based approach to inspections and introducing a moratorium on planned control measures, criminal pressure remains the main subject of business complaints to the state. Such conclusions were reached yesterday by the participants of the forum “Protection of business from criminal and administrative pressure: status and tasks” at the RSPP. According to the head of the RSPP, Alexander Shokhin, business is most concerned about the practice of transferring civil disputes to the criminal procedure plane, unjustified seizure of property, documents and electronic media, seizure of property during investigative actions, as well as excessive criminalization of acts in the economic sphere.
It should be noted that the reduction of criminal pressure on business and the decriminalization of economic crimes were one of the points of the business support program after the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine. In February 2022, the President pledged to ensure “greater freedom of enterprise” and predictability of government actions even in the absence of geopolitical stability. Work on the humanization of criminal legislation has begun (see Kommersant of November 30, 2022), but entrepreneurs continue to insist on more extensive indulgences.
The head of Opora Rossii, Alexander Kalinin, complained about the lengthy procedures for considering cases: if in Soviet practice this period did not exceed six months, now the investigation period has been increased to a year with the possibility of repeated extensions. Business Ombudsman Boris Titov is concerned about the growing problems around the implementation of public procurement due to the high dependence of companies on budget financing: 85% of requests to the institution of the Commissioner are related to the implementation of state orders. The responsibility of the state and business is not yet balanced: customers remain a strong point and abuse it, Mr. Titov complained. Earlier, entrepreneurs have already reported on upcoming amendments to some of the articles of the Criminal Code related to fraud in the performance of government contracts (see Kommersant dated December 22, 2022).
Minister of Justice Konstantin Chuychenko promised to study the initiatives of business in detail. The fact that part of the requests of business can be satisfied is evidenced by the speech of President Vladimir Putin at the annual meeting with the judges. He appealed to the need to protect entrepreneurs from unjustified criminal prosecutions “in the context of sanctions aggression”, noting that the choice of preventive measures in the form of house arrest and bail for those accused of economic crimes will contribute to the further humanization of justice. Previously, the RSPP addressed such initiatives.
In the meantime, the White House continues to reduce administrative pressure on business. Thus, the Ministry of Economy proposed to simplify reporting to Rosstat for the SME sector – the corresponding bill was published on regulation.gov.ru. If it is accepted, then instead of filling out numerous documents, business representatives will have to report on an exhaustive list of indicators – through the GIS “Digital analytical platform for the provision of statistical data” through public services or the SME portal. As stated in the explanatory note, out of almost 2.5 thousand regular reporting forms, more than 1 thousand are small businesses. In this case, the main burden is created by departmental reporting, which is often “collected haphazardly, and the methodology for collecting it is approved in rare cases.”
Business asks for wider debureaucratization
The bill is supported by Delovaya Rossiya: “Actually, a situation has arisen where entrepreneurs are forced to provide the same information to state bodies in various forms of reporting,” notes Sergey Gebel, a member of the organization’s general council. “At the same time, the forms change regularly, they have different deadlines and there are serious penalties for violating it. As a result, due to the lack of developed interagency cooperation, entrepreneurs bear an increased financial burden.” As specified in the explanatory note to the bill, the list will not include indicators for which statistical information can be generated using administrative data. The list will be drawn up so that the majority of SMEs do not have to report more than four times a year, the authors of the initiative emphasize. Given the potential benefits of reducing the bureaucratic burden on the sector, Delovaya Rossiya believes that such a practice should be expanded not only to small and medium-sized enterprises, but also to the rest of Russian business.
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