What is the situation of small-size business in Azerbaijan?

The Centre for Development of Small-and Medium-Size Enterprises jointly with the Fund for Support of Enterpreneurship and Market Economy have held a presentation of the results of the poll of small-size businessmen in Azerbaijan in Park Inn hotel.  The poll is a part of the project for development of small-size business in Azerbaijan funded by USAID.

Ilkin Garayev, chairman of the Centre, said the poll was held from March 7 to April 17, not considering the preparation period, among 1,000 businessmen in 8 economic regions, including Baku, Ganja, Sumgait and 17 administrative regions. 9.2% of those polled were juridical persons and the remaining were physical persons involved in business. 30% of those polled are involved in commerce, 30% work in the service industry, 20% are manufacturers and 20% work in agriculture.

Those polled were asked 47 questions in 12 categories. The goal of the poll was to determine conditions and obstacles for development of small-size business, problems with obtaining licenses and registration of property. The specialists were also interested in knowledge of laws by businessmen, their attitude towards tax and customs agencies and the opinions about development of this sector of economy.

The preliminary conclusion is that despite anonymity of the poll, part of those polled preferred to be careful, but 41% of them believe that there are no significant changes in their activities. In addition to the tax inspection, the businessmen are most frequently visited by the representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and least of all by the representatives of the Ministry of National Security and local executive power. The licenses and special permissions are issued for a short period of time, which takes a lot of time.

The officials of state institutions create most of the obstacles and there are problems with papers . Over one third of those polled (35.8%) face problems during registration of property. Out of 1,000 those polled only 181 ones properly applied to the Fund for Entrepreneurship Support under the Ministry of Economic Development and 111 of them managed to receive soft credit.

Small-size businessmen need reduction of tax rates, wide access to electronic services and propaganda of law through TV channels and internet resources. Those polled also stressed the necessity of simplification of customs procedures.—0---