Rustem Sibgatullin spoke about forms of state support for SMEs in districts

Yesterday, a zonal meeting on development of SMEs was held in Drozhzhanovskiy district of the Republic of Tatarstan. At the meeting, the Deputy Minister of Economy of the Republic of Tatarstan Rustem Sibgatullin spoke about the main forms of state support for small and medium-sized enterprises.

To date, 159.3 thousand entities operate in the republic in the SME sector. The number of people employed in SMEs is 591.4 thousand (including self-employed). Since 2019, the Republic of Tatarstan has been participating in a pilot project to introduce a special tax regime “Professional income tax” or, as it is also called, a tax regime for the self-employed. Currently, according to the tax authorities in the republic, more than 58.1 thousand people have registered themselves as self-employed, as well as more than 6.5 thousand self-employed from other regions who have chosen the Republic of Tatarstan as their place of business.

“I would like to once again note that the main goal of the tax experiment is to involve people, taxpayers in legal relations with the state and their clients, through new technologies and building trust of the taxpayer in the state, rather than seeking additional revenue to the budget”, Rustem Sibgatullin emphasized.

The Deputy Minister also noted that at the moment the most demanded among entrepreneurs are financial measures of state support. These include microloans, so for 2019, 399 microloans worth 934.6 million rubles were issued. Microloans to the SMEs of the republic are provided by the “Entrepreneurship Support Fund of the Republic of Tatarstan”. Tatarstan entrepreneurs can receive a microloan in the amount of 100 thousand to 5 million rubles for a period of up to 3 years with a rate of 5% per annum.

Another popular financial support measure for small and medium-sized businesses is the guarantee of the Guarantee Fund of the Republic of Tatarstan. In 2019, 274 guarantees were provided, for a total amount of 1.5 billion rubles, which allowed entities to attract borrowed financing of 5.5 billion rubles. Entrepreneurs resort to this measure of support in case of insufficient collateral for loans, borrowings and leasing. Guarantee Fund of the RT provides guarantees in the amount of up to 30.0 million rubles for standard products and up to 50.0 million rubles for “Co-guarantees”. The share of the guarantee is up to 50% of the amount of the borrower's obligations, for agricultural cooperatives and entrepreneurs operating in rural areas - up to 70%.

Also last year, 26 projects were financed in the Russian Federation under the program of preferential leasing in the amount of 738.1 million rubles, including 10 Tatarstan projects worth 428.8 million rubles. According to the conditions of the regional leasing company of the republic, the interest rate is from 6% per annum, the amount of financing: from 2.5 million rubles to 200 million rubles.

A relatively new measure of support for entrepreneurs is subsidizing interest rates on loans. According to the terms of the program, in 2019 the amount of subsidies per recipient is up to 10.0 million rubles per year, depending on the category. The rate that is compensated can be no more than 14.13% per annum. At the end of 2019, starting from October, 57 small and medium-sized enterprises received a subsidy for a total of 130.3 million rubles.

The republic actively supports export-oriented SMEs. With a plan of 90 companies, in 2019, 94 were exported, and export contracts worth $ 24.19 million were concluded. It is worth noting that among the total number of exported companies, there are 2 organizations from Drozhzhanovskiy and Zelenodolskiy municipal regions, 1 company from the Kamsko-Ustinskiy municipal district. In the past year, these districts were most active and showed a high level of involvement of entrepreneurs in export activities. There was a low activity of SMEs interested in entering foreign markets in Apastovskiy, Buinskiy, Verkhneuslonskiy, Kaibitskiy, Tetyushskiy municipal districts. Entrepreneurs from Spasskiy district did not apply for support last year.

The main institution for supporting export-oriented small and medium enterprises of the republic is the Export Support Center. The center in a single window mode provides comprehensive support to SMEs at all stages of foreign economic activity.

In addition, each district of the republic has its regional representatives of the My Business center. Thanks to them, entrepreneurs can get the necessary advice on all support measures provided in Tatarstan without leaving the district.

Entrepreneurs are also provided with property support with preferential rental rates. Lists of such property are approved in all municipal districts and urban districts. Currently, 785 objects of movable and immovable property are included in these registers.

An exchange platform was created for entrepreneurs on the basis of the Government Order Agency, which is a small volume electronic procurement portal. The resource allows using public tendering: to customers - to purchase quality products, and to business - to gain access to contracts of budgetary organizations that were previously concluded with a single supplier.

In order to create new industries and jobs, as well as support local producers, a Decree of the President of the Republic of Tatarstan on introduction of a system for promoting products manufactured in Tatarstan to the markets was adopted. The system was created on the basis of the federal trading platform of the Government Order Agency of the Republic of Tatarstan. In the future, the system will allow to develop production, create new jobs and cooperation chains with local manufacturers. So, over the past year, 413 enterprises of the republic registered on the site, 205 enterprises placed orders for small businesses. The system will ensure the localization of production, development of competition in procurement, making them open.

At the end of his speech, Rustem Sibgatullin told representatives of the business community about the work of the FASTTRACK portal. The portal was developed by the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Tatarstan for ease of access for entrepreneurs to financial and non-financial support measures in the “single window” format. The easy-to-use service combined all offers to support SMEs in the republic on its online platform. The number of service users has already exceeded 10.3 thousand, more than 248 SMEs have applied for support measures through the portal. Basically, these are applications for a microloan, lease of land, services of the Unified Credit Center.