Little Idea

The FAS Bill on Mandatory Procurement of Major Private Companies in Small Business was to be discussed by the First Vice-Prime Officer Igor Schuvalov last week. The meeting was not held, is known by the federal official, as well as by the RCF and the Forest Russia. The idea is not to give up, the main question is how to regulate this process, FAS and Mineconomy-Development must prepare proposals, is the federal official speaking. The representative of the secretariat of Shuvalova does not comment on this subject.

FAS issued a draft amendment to the Competition Protection Act in October: private companies with 7 billion roubles should spend at least 10 per cent of the profits on small and medium-sized businesses. But later, the project was changed, the quota fell to 10 per cent of the company ' s order (net of natural monopolies, financial services and real estate) rather than the proceeds.

The bill has protested a major business. Head of FAS, Igor Artemiev, stated in December that the bill had been withdrawn but had not ruled that the debate would be back in the spring. The project could be mitigated, told Artemis and suggested replacing mandatory quotas to encourage such procurement. One of the incentives could be to return VAT to small businesses, which would make them more attractive by counterparts, was offered by RSPP President Alexander Shawhin (then buyers would be able to deduct VAT).

Low

The share of 18 per cent is derived from all the company ' s orders, excluding defence, nuclear power and real estate, energy, large-scale pipes, financial services, natural monopolies, air transport.

FAS sent the project to the Ministry several months ago and continues to work on it, said by the FAS representative. In the view of the Ministry of Economic Development, it was not appropriate to introduce such an obligation in law for all major private companies, the representative of the Ministry of Economic Development had said that that was contrary to world practice.