Civil society is waiting for radical reforms in the field of entrepreneurship

Today at Hotel Hilton Baku with the support of USAID a conference was held on Development of Entrepreneurship in Azerbaijan.

According to the organizer , the head of the Assistance Fund for Market Economy Sabit Bagirov, the event is associated with the execution of the presidential decree "On additional measures to develop entrepreneurship" on March 3 this year, aimed at improving the business regulatory environment and creating a favorable business environment. The main feature of the document is identifying (from a total of 18) ministries and departments responsible for a range of measures - from registration to finance specific projects.

According to Bagirov, Azerbaijan has opportunities to improve positions in the ranking of Doing Business- 2015 (in the current list of the country was 70th among 189 participants). To do this, it is necessary to change the law for the dramatic reduction in the manner and timing in electronic registration as legal entities and individuals engaged in business without a legal entity in accordance with the principle of "one window." Furthermore, it should reduce the time, number of procedures and monetary costs of providing permits for construction and connection to the power supply network , reduction procedures, time and cost of state registration of rights to real estate .

Still have problems with the improvement of the institutions that have an impact on the process of granting loans, as well as protecting the interests of investors, reducing the number of documents, time and cost required in import-export operations. There are problems and bankruptcy at the closing of business structures.

According to the chairman of the Center for Economic Research Ghalib Togrul, Azerbaijan has no conditions for normal business. Even official resource (http://russian.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/azerbaijan) believes that the country has the most improved position in three positions - the registration of enterprises became the 10th in the world (it was the 16th ) , decreased specific overdue and prolonged loans, moreover, the position on taxation improved - 77th against 79th last year.

In the remaining seven positions the situation became worse, especially bad things in the issuance of building permits , where the average and, especially , the small business is facing great challenges harmonization - because of paperwork and 28 mandatory procedures , stretching for about 9 months , Azerbaijan became 180th (previous year - 179th line).

According to the Ministry of Economy and Industry, to January 1, 2014 there were 445,000 private entrepreneurs. Popular sector is peddling - it occupied 69.6% of private enterprises, 10.1 % of the companies prefer  transport services, 3.5% - hospitality and so on, in the descending line. For every three of four companies hide the number of employees; as a result the social security fund gets short of tens of millions of manats of mandatory contributions, said the expert.

Total rating Doing-Business-2014, including Azerbaijan, is based on 10 items. The best among post-Soviet countries is Georgia (8th place), also ahead of Azerbaijan are Lithuania ( 17th ) , Estonia (22nd) , Latvia ( 24th ), Armenia ( 37th ) , Kazakhstan ( 50th ) , Belarus ( 63rd ) and Kyrgyzstan ( 68th ) .

The most favorable and accessible to entrepreneurs ten countries, except Georgia, are Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the USA, Denmark, Malaysia, South Korea , Norway and the UK .

The list includes four new countries: Libya, Myanmar, San Marino and South Sudan. - 17D-