Penza, 26 October 2015. PenzaNews. The Penza region must intensify the activities to support creating functional small enterprises, stated the governor Ivan Belozertsev during the regional government meeting session, after the head of the Penza Statistics Service (Penzastat) Sergei Shemenev reported shrinking numbers of small companies in the region.

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“We did pass the law on zero-percent tax rate, after all. […] Obviously, we don’t need to create ‘zero-work’ enterprises just for numbers. We need those that will actually work,” the governor stressed.

“Does this mean we have blundered on this issue?” he asked.

In reply, Sergei Shemenev pointed out that the decline is relatively small.

In turn, Ivan Belozertsev instructed Valery Bespalov, acting deputy chairman of the regional government, to increase cooperation and feedback with heads of municipalities to make them better inform businessmen of discount tax rates available in the region.

“We are providing incentives, and we must not leave the situation unattended,” the governor stressed.

He also asked if the numbers of newly created and functional small enterprises are taken into account during evaluation of heads of municipalities.

Rauf Chakaev, acting Minister of Economy in the Penza region, replied, saying this parameter may be included in evaluation criteria lists in the future.

In turn, Lyubov Finogeeva, head of the Penza region Ministry of Finance, proposed to analyze basic activity figures along with numbers of such enterprises, “to make an accumulated picture.”

Next, Sergei Shemenev pointed out that a decrease in numbers of small enterprises led to an increase of the portion of goods shipped by small enterprises in the total volume of shipped goods.

The latter figure is more important than the numbers of enterprises, Ivan Belozertsev pointed out.

“But we still need to encourage the creation of ‘living’ enterprises along the way. We have good legal base for it in this respect,” he said.

The governor also asked to analyze the figures reported by the head of Penzastat, and closely monitor those that are currently in decline.