The Government approved a draft bill on expanding the range of subjects of medium sized entrepreneurship

A draft bill of the federal law “On introduction of changes into the Federal Law “On development of small and medium sized entrepreneurship in the Russian Federation” prepared by the Ministry of Economy Development of Russia jointly with Minpromtorg and FTS was approved on the meeting of the RF Government.

The document was developed in accordance with the Program of support of light industry for 2016. Chairman of the RF Government Dmitry Medvedev specified that the draft bill was focused on business support. “It allows to a larger number of small and medium sized enterprises to rely on government support”, he said and reminded that now according to the law, only companies corresponding to two main criteria can be referred to MSB. The first one - is the annual revenue size not over 2 billion rubles. And the second one - when the number of employees should not exceed 250 people. According to him this optimal correlation, however as the practice shows, some companies in the sphere of light industry create work places – because of the specifics of this production – for more people and at that generate profit in a smaller volume. This is a specificity of light industry and is connected with technological peculiarities and high labor consumption of production processes, sometimes just with the backwardness of these productions. That is why factories loose the status of small and medium sized enterprise and the right to take part on the programs of state support.

“This situation can be changed by pushing the ceiling of the number of employees for companies that produce textiles, leather, clothing,”- he said. “We have repeatedly talked about how important it is to revive these segments of light industry in our country. This will help not only to implement investment projects, but it will also create new jobs in the regions”.

The draft bill provides that the subjects of medium sized business can be the companies, operating in the sphere of light industry and the average number of employees exceeds the limit value for such enterprises, established by the federal law.

At the same time the document establishes that the activity, referring to the sphere of light industry will be recognized as main on condition, if the share of its profits by results of the previous calendar year amounts to more than 70% in the total volume of profits of the legal entity.