The Plan of the Ministry of Economic Development for the Transformation of the Business Climate Was Supplemented with New Measures

Vladimir Putin set an ambitious goal for the Ministry of Economic Development: by 2024, Russia should rise to 20th in the World Bank’s Doing Business rating (now our country occupies 31st place out of 190). To achieve this goal, the government, with the participation of business, has developed a plan for “Transforming the business climate.” The plan is not static ― it is constantly updated with new initiatives. For this year the following areas were included in the plan:

• Protection of the rights and legitimate interests of entrepreneurs
• Tourism
• Agriculture
• Ecology
• Social sphere
• Intellectual property protection
• Artificial Intelligence

What’s Been Approved in the New Set of Measures

Bank accounts of organizations will be blocked less often

It will be more difficult for banks to block the settlement accounts of organizations for suspicious transactions; formal indications will not be enough. The reason for the block will need to be explained to the businessperson. The unblocking procedure, on the contrary, will be easier.

It will be faster to commission capital construction facilities

A list of facilities for which a building permit and excessive territory planning documentation will not be required will be compiled.

Now, even with minor deviations that do not affect the design and safety of housing, when commissioning a facility, it’s necessary to make changes to the project, re-pass the examination and again obtain a building permit. Under the new rules, such minor deviations of the facility’s area from the data specified in the construction permit should not prevent commissioning and cadastral registration. This measure should reduce the period for commissioning of capital construction facilities and the registration of property rights by 60 days.

Connecting to networks will be easier

The technical regulation of the safety of gas distribution networks and gas consumption will become simpler. The interaction between enterprises and network organizations will switch to electronic format. Drafting an agreement on technical connection is no longer required.

Customs procedures will take less time and be more transparent

Complete control of goods will be replaced by a selective one. The time for passing checkpoints will be reduced by 30%.

Clear rules will be established for calculating the amount of financial security required for goods not subject to customs duty.

Also, the participants in the working group proposed 3 options for solving the problem of determining preferential VAT rates (the Federal Tax Service and the Federal Customs Service use different criteria).

Only interested persons will remain among business owners

• Criteria have been established for the exclusion of a shareholder.
• When counting votes, shares of inactive shareholders will not be taken into account. Their shares will be allowed to be put up for sale.
• The possibility of holding shareholders meetings in the form of an online broadcast is being discussed.
• Business will no longer need to publish in the press information on the reorganization and liquidation of a legal entity, a decrease in its authorized capital, on the acquisition of more than 20% of the authorized capital of another legal entity, and in a number of other cases. Such information will be entered in a special federal register.

Agriculture

Independent entrepreneurs were allowed to provide quarantine phytosanitary disinfection services. This should favorably affect the prices of these services.

What disagreements are there

1. The business is not satisfied with the notarization of the power of attorney of individual entrepreneurs for the submission of tax reports: they suggest replacing the notary service with an electronic signature of declarations. A number of government departments were opposed: they believe that the abolition of the requirement will increase the risk of abuse and falsification of signatures.
2. Experts proposed introducing administrative liability for banks for late blocking of funds in special accounts to secure applications for participation in government procurement (44-FZ) and procurement of state-owned companies from small businesses (223-FZ). Ministry of Finance refers to statistics for isolated cases of such a problem.

Source: RBC