Due to the coronavirus pandemic in Russia, 220 thousand small businesses have stopped their work. In two years the state allocated about US$ 8 billion to support small and medium-sized businesses.
“Despite such a blow of the pandemic, yes, we have reduced the number of small businesses by 220 thousand, we now have 5 million 780 thousand enterprises,” said Alexander Kalinin, President of the public organization of small and medium business "Opora Russia", local media reports.
“At the same time, official employment in small business increased by 1.3%,” he added.
In Kalinin’s words, all measures were aimed at maintaining employment in small business. “Employment means the opportunity to receive a salary, the ability to use government support measures, the ability to support their families,” he explained, adding that “currently there are a number of proposals for small business to start recovering and enter a sustainable growth trajectory.
In early March, RF Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin approved a new program to support entrepreneurs: the credit reimbursement program "Payroll 2.0, which ended on April 1, is replaced by a new one - "Payroll 3.0", for which about US$103 million (7.7 billion rubles) are allocated. The main difference of the new program is that now the rate of soft loans will not be 2%, but 3%. Earlier, Mishustin said that in two years the state allocated about US$ 8 billion (600 billion rubles) to support small and medium-sized businesses.
