Reshetnikov said small businesses have become a driver of economic restructuring

MOSCOW, May 4 – RIA Novosti. In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov said that small businesses have become a real driver of the structural restructuring of the Russian economy.

“Thanks to all the systemic policies and national project carried out over the years (“Supporting Small and Medium Enterprises and Individual Entrepreneurship Initiatives” – ed.), we can now say that small businesses are now the real driver of the structural adjustment economy,” Reshetnikov said.

“This is a real participant in the activity, which is a very strong sector in the manufacturing industry, mechanical engineering, metalworking and IT sector, and the professional services sector and of course tourism. Of course, the hospitality sector is now also a locomotive sector,” he explained.

“And all this is done directly, thanks to the support provided. Every ten rubles of credit in the economy of small and medium-sized enterprises is somehow supported by state financing, and as a rule these are loans that are top priority sectors,” added the minister.

According to him, the Ministry of Economic Development is currently developing two main programs to support the SME sector: so-called umbrella financing, in which the authorities guarantee some of the losses incurred by banks from lending to small businesses, and the Central Bank’s program to fund banks to lend to small businesses at preferential rates.

According to him, thanks to these programs, concessional loans became available in the regions. “If earlier there were the same centers, locomotives, of course big cities, metropolitan agglomerations, etc., now all these tools are enabling the spread of lending across the country,” he said.