Freedom for meat cutters!

Small business does not want to grow on Russian soil. No matter how much you water it, or hill it, it still does not grow. Just as it accounted for 10-15% of GDP in the late 90s, it still accounts for 11-13% now. At the same time, regular attempts by the authorities to somehow stimulate the process, firstly, leave a strong feeling of what has already been seen more than once, and secondly, cause at least distrust.

For example, Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, having taken to heart the words of Dmitry Medvedev, elected but not yet subjected to the pleasant procedure of inauguration, that by 2020 60-70% of Russians could be attributed to the middle class, he decided to start acting now. And since Medvedev also casually dropped at one of the meetings that “the development of the middle class in the country is the development of small business,” the direction of efforts for the prime minister immediately became clear and obvious. And now the prime minister is meeting with ministers, scientists, notorious representatives of small businesses. Promises and reveals. “Now in Russia, to organize a small business, you need to go through 23 instances, get 23 approvals, and this stretches for months, sometimes for years ... What are we talking about when we offer a cash register to a meat cutter in the market?! Maybe it’s better for him to buy a patent and work from morning to night ?! thundered the prime minister at the Academy of National Economy. Well, let's say, about meat cutters in the market - it's in vain, the radical reduction of markets and meat cutters (and at the same time the meat itself) in these markets did not happen at all because someone was tortured with cash registers, but because unsuccessfully competed with foreign labor force. But that's okay, the passage about 23 instances is much more interesting. Is it not us back in 2002, the ideologist of debureaucratization, and part-time then Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref, told us how wonderfully the law “On State Registration of Legal Entities” No. 129-FZ works. There is even a quote: “One window means that with regard to registration in various instances of a new legal entity, the registering authority performs all the necessary operations itself, and the applicant comes for registration, firstly, to just one state authority, and in secondly, it takes only “two steps”: the first is to submit documents, and the second is to pick up a document confirming the fact of registration. Moreover, the law also provides for the possibility of submitting documents for registration by mail.” However, who now remembers some 2002 ...

In a word, now the authorities again promised to sort it out and help. Even a new structure will be created - the Council for the Development of Small Business. And it will be headed not by anyone, but by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov himself. And again in my head an obsessive feeling of deja vu. Was it not Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin who, back in October 1995, signed the government decree “On the State Committee of the Russian Federation for the Support and Development of Small Business”? Indeed, he signed, there was such a State Committee with functions and powers. Did not survive the administrative reform in the framework of debureaucratization.

Or maybe the problems of small business lie in the fact that the authorities do not really need it and it is not very well integrated into the current system? For example, food prices rose in the country in the second half of last year, Comrade Zubkov gathered a dozen owners of retail chains for a meeting, and they decided to freeze prices for socially significant products until the presidential elections. And what if food retail were completely in the power of meat cutters? Follow them around the markets, persuade them to cooperate, convey the general line to everyone - you still can’t control everyone.