Smolensk hosted an investment forum

Governor Alexey Ostrovskiy participated in the forum "The development of the investment and business climate in Smolensk region: the situation analysis, search for opportunities and growth points". The main purpose of the forum is to analyze the most relevant problematic issues the region is facing in terms of development of the investment and business climate and together with federal and regional experts and business community to work out effective approaches to the successful development in the future.

Among the participants of such an important event there are the heads of federal public organizations working in the sphere of business and entrepreneurship development, public authorities, entrepreneurs and representatives of the region's business community.

The speakers of the Conference also were the federal experts: Alexander Kalinin, the President of the All-Russian public organization of small and medium business "SUPPORT OF RUSSIA" (“OPORA ROSSII”), Elena Bocherova, the Vice-President, the head of the Executive Committee of the All-Russian public organization "Business Russia", Ivan Avrah, the head of the Directorate of small and medium business development projects of the strategic initiatives Agency to promote new projects.

The Governor spoke about the current policy of the regional authorities in the sphere of attracting investments. Today, the region has a system of state support measures aimed at assisting enterprises and stimulation of investment processes. In particular, the regional legislation provides tax breaks, subsidies, support of investment projects, infrastructural, property, informational and organizational assistance.

The current regional investment policy has shown specific results. For example, according to the National rating of the investment climate in 2016, the average time spent in the regions of Russia on the registration of a legal entity, is about 11 days. At the same time, as Alexey Ostrovskiy emphasized, in our region, if the application is submitted directly by the business representative, the procedure of submitting documents for the registration of an individual as an entrepreneur with an operational bank account takes exactly one day. With the use of the same electronic service, a legal entity can be registered for 2-3 days.

During the open discussion, the participants raised a number of other topical issues. All the recommendations and pain points were taken into account – as a result the key directions in the development of the region will be looked into more careful.