Ilsur Metshin: “It's impossible to say that we are satisfied with the implementation of this program”

(KZN.RU, January 29, Alsu Safina). Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of Kazan, urged to work on the mistakes and speed up the launch of the city program for concessional lending to SMEs on the Business Monday today.

Artur Valiakhmetov, the chairman of the Committee of Economic Development, reminded that over 79000 small and medium-sized enterprises operate in the capital of Tatarstan today. 46500 are small and micro-enterprises, 33000 individual entrepreneurs, and 162 medium-sized enterprises. The share of small and medium-sized businesses in the gross territorial product of the city is 37.9%. The total turnover of SMEs grew by 7.5% to 420.2 billion rubles in 9 months of 2017. The amount of tax revenues from small and medium-sized businesses to the budget of Kazan amounted to 3.32 billion rubles, or 29.4% of the total amount of tax revenues received by the city.

“Almost 38% of the gross territorial product is small and medium business today. The figures are growing in the number of people employed in small and medium businesses, in turnover of these enterprises, and in tax deductions”, Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of Kazan, commented on the information. “This shows that despite the difficulties, more and more active, enterprising people of the capital choose to come up with businesses that are in demand today by the population. This is pleasing”.

At the same time, the numbers announced on the implementation of the program of concessional lending in Kazan in 2017 caused an ambiguous response from the Mayor. The Executive Committee subsidizes a part of the interest rate on the loan of the bank-operator chosen based on an open tender, under the preferential lending program. Last year, the winner of the contest was “Tatsotsbank”, which offered the lowest rate (9.5%). Under the terms of the program, the business could receive a loan of up to 10 million rubles for a period of 3 and 5 years, while taking into account the subsidy, the interest rate ranged 2-4.5%.

The Chairman of the Committee of Economic Development said that the Executive Committee had considered only 138 applications last year, 99 of which had been previously approved and 39 had been provisionally rejected. At the same time, the applications of entrepreneurs were agreed upon after the faults were worked through. "The implementation of the program in 2017 resulted in 39 loans for a total amount of about 275 million rubles”, said the speaker. For comparison, the bank operator issued 50 loans for a total amount of 365.8 million rubles in 2016.

According to the speaker, firms that received loans on preferential terms were following: 56% of the production firms that, 18% – medicine, 5% – housing and communal services, and 3% – domestic tourism. In addition, firms working in especially priority areas participated in the program. These are hostels and hotels (8%), education (5%).

Artur Valikhmetov explained the decrease in the number of loans by a number of reasons. First of all, last year a new municipal program to support small and medium-sized businesses was adopted, which was approved in April. The second reason is that, against the background of the situation in the banking sector of the RT, entrepreneurs tried not to burden themselves with new debts and were wary of regional banks.

The Chairman of the Committee of Economic Development also said that there are claims from the entrepreneurs to the bank operator because of the very low provision factor from the cost of collateral, the slow work of the analytical department of the bank, the large volume of additional documents requested.

“All problems, including the experience of the past years, will be taken into account this year when the program is launched. It is planned to present new requirements to the bank-operator. At present, we have formed the conditions for a new project. During February, we plan to discuss them with the business community, carry out the tender procedures provided by the legislation, and start the implementation of the program in March”, said Artur Valikhmetov.

The Mayor of Kazan urged to intensify the work on launching the program and to work out updated program conditions taking into account the wishes of entrepreneurs.

“39 credits have been issued. The absolute number is good. But this is out of thousand enterprises. Even from those 99 who received preliminary approval of the application, only 39 reached the finish line”, said the head of the city. “There are, probably, other objective reasons among the ones you named. But we cannot be satisfied with the implementation of this program. Of course, this is better than in other cities, where there is no such support at all. But it is not what we should look up to”. “Yes, there was the banking crisis, there will be something every year. But we are the leaders, authorities, we resolve any issues that we face”, said the Mayor.

“You should correct the errors. Of course, this is money, there is legislation that regulates these relations. Choose the bank-operator in such a way that it could keep up with us in the implementation of this program”, added the Mayor.