Useful habits

Socially responsible business will be awarded in Rostov

The mayor's office of Rostov-on-Don has announced a competition, based on the results of which it is going to find the most socially responsible entrepreneur and present him with a special award. At the same time, officials, judging by the terms of the competition, recognize as socially responsible those who simply keep “white” accounting, pay the legal salary in full and do not violate the Labor Code.

True, in order to be guaranteed to win the competition, it is advisable for a businessman to be a hero twice: spend money on charity and financially participate in social projects initiated by the authorities. Socially responsible people in Rostov will be awarded on September 9, coinciding with the City Day.

After the Russian President coined the term “socially responsible business” in 2003, no one was able to fully explain its meaning. Entrepreneurs have not yet fully understood what and in what volumes they must share with society in order to correspond to this title. Now Rostov officials have calmed down business. According to the terms of the competition, the entrepreneur who pays his employees a salary above the subsistence level (more than 3,300 rubles per month), provides them with a social package, and created new jobs over the past year will be considered socially responsible. That is, it actually works in accordance with current legislation, primarily tax and labor laws.

However, such loyal requirements for socially responsible people are also explained by the fact that they want to attract primarily small businesses to the competition, which, according to the regional Ministry of Economy, massively pay salaries in envelopes and deal with unaccounted revenue.

As for large and medium-sized companies, the level of their social responsibility on the Don is usually stricter. For example, when a wheat harvest failed in Russia several years ago and bread prices began to rise sharply, local authorities asked the largest Don grain traders to provide local bakeries with cheap raw materials. There were no refuseniks - even despite the fact that at some point it was necessary to supply flour and grain at prices below market prices. And co-owner of Russian Coal Vadim Varshavsky, as soon as he received a State Duma deputy mandate from the Rostov region, immediately became the general sponsor of the main Don football team “Rostov”.

An even more striking example of social responsibility happened in the Rostov region just a couple of weeks ago. The owner of the Taganrog company "Karavai Plus", entrepreneur Alexander Denisov, who is now on the international wanted list in the case of the theft of raw sugar from the transnational corporation Louis Dreyfus, donated to Taganrog a clinic and the Torpedo stadium that belongs to him.

At the same time, the regional authorities never tire of repeating that as a social responsibility of business, they are quite satisfied with timely legal wages at the enterprise not lower than the regional average (about 6,100 rubles), as well as payment of taxes in full. Almost like the requirements for a socially responsible small business.

However, according to Margarita Fadeeva, a representative of the city department of economics of Rostov-on-Don, the jury of the upcoming competition for the most socially responsible person will also pay attention to how the activities of a particular entrepreneur are covered in the media and how the entrepreneur relates to charity.

Larisa NIKITINA, Rostov-on-Don