Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 27 – The share of
small and mid-sized business is contracting, Rosstat reports, falling from 22 percent
of GDP in 2017 to 20.2 percent in 2018, the last year for which figures are
available, even though Vladimir Putin’s national project in this area assumes
that they still form 22 percent and will grow to 32.5 percent in 2025 (iarex.ru/news/73550.html).
The Meister telegram channel
suggests that the decline reflects low consumer demand which affects this
sector more than others and the government’s almost exclusive focus on big
corporations, leaving these smaller firms to shift for themselves with little support
(t.me/maester/1068).
In reporting both the Rosstat data
and the Meister telegram channel comment, the editors of the Rex news agency
say that one should be cautious about such statistics because Moscow conducts a
real census of such businesses only once every five years and then uses a
sample poll to predict changes in the interim.
The editors also note that some of the
change in the size of small and mid-sized businesses reflects changes in the
way in which units are counted in the agricultural sector. Some agricultural
small businesses disappeared when the government allowed rural residents to
reclassify their holdings as personal gardens.
Nonetheless, it is almost certain that
the depressed state of the Russian economy means that Russians have less money
to spend and that hits the small and mid-sized firms far harder because they
are typically far more dependent on such domestic demand than on government purchases
or foreign sales.
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