The Ministry of Economic Development did not see a "dramatic" reduction in small business

The Ministry of Economic Development and Commissioner for Entrepreneurs' Rights Boris Titov argued about the reliability of state statistics on the consequences of the pandemic for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). On December 15, Titov announced doubts about the official data at the All-Russian Conference of Commissioners for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs, RBC correspondent reports.

“At the moment, we are not seeing a dramatic decrease in the number of SMEs,” said Inna Dadayan, Acting DIRECTOR of the Investment Policy and Entrepreneurship Development Department of the Ministry of Economic Development. “At the same time, we see a reduction in entrepreneurial activity in terms of starting a new business.”

“We have already stopped completely focusing on official statistics in our work,” objected business ombudsman Boris Titov.

As of December 10, 860,000 new entrepreneurs have registered since the beginning of the year, while over 1 million over the same period last year. More than 15.5 million employees are employed at enterprises from the SME register. The number of employees in this segment decreased by about 4% in the third quarter compared to the same period in 2019, Dadayan cited the data. This reduction corresponds to approximately 600 thousand people.

Earlier, CSR experts estimated the number of SME employees who will lose their jobs by the end of 2020 at 1.1 million people. The assessment was carried out on the basis of a survey of 5,000 enterprises.