The great trouble of large markets – “The price of small neighborhood shops in Baku has decreased by half” |

“The development of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) is a priority for us.” This was said by the Minister of Economy Mikayil Jabbarov at the event on “Strengthening SMEs: Economic diversification and green development” on December 1. According to him, a number of special measures have been taken: “At one time, the number of people working in small and medium enterprises was 500,000, but now this number has reached 850,000 people… gas its share in the sector increased to 56 percent. 27 percent of our youth are employees of SMEs.

But there are still enough barriers for small and medium-sized businesses. One of the small entrepreneurs, who did not want to be named, told RFE/RL that in order to start your own business in Azerbaijan, you have to go through serious bureaucratic hurdles: “On paper credit the terms are very good – the interest is low and you only pay the interest at the initial stage. But in order to get this loan, they ask for a lot of documents, you have to wait a lot and the trustee credit the organization makes you come and go.”

According to him, taxes are not as low as it seems: “Social the defense fee is too high. I am in business. “I pay 50 percent of the minimum wage (300 manats) every month.”

From the Small and Medium Business Development Agency “Turan” was told that approximately 99.6 percent of entrepreneurs in Azerbaijan are SMEs: “93.3 percent of them are micro, 4.5 percent are small, and 1.8 percent are medium enterprises. 20 last year20Compared to 2008, the turnover of SMEs increased by 85 percent on average. In our country, SMEs are mainly engaged in trade, construction, processing, village they operate in economy, logistics and other fields”.

National Rufat Guliyev, a member of the Economic Policy, Industry and Entrepreneurship Committee of the Assembly, said,Turan“a said that the reforms carried out in that field have a positive effect on business development: “It is impossible to fight inflation with any macroeconomic methods. It is necessary to ensure local production of products. The conversation here is mainly about food products and village it’s about the farm. I think that there will be serious progress in this area.”

Deputy according to him, in Azerbaijan monopoly sectors have decreased significantly: “In some places, oligopolies (dominance of a few firms in the markets) remained – four or five companies. But it also decreases every quarter, demonopolization is happening. Corruption exists in any market country. But the state is struggling with this. “The process of suppressing corruption schemes and mechanisms is underway.”

Economist Natig Jafarli also told Azadlig Radio that the growth of small and medium entrepreneurship is felt in certain numbers and parameters: “But there are certain indicators according to which the share of small and medium entrepreneurship in the economy is measured all over the world. For example, the share of small and medium enterprises in the formation of the gross domestic product. The share of taxes paid by those entrepreneurs in the volume of taxes paid to the general state budget is taken as a measure. Europe in these countries, this indicator varies between 60-80 percent.

According to him, if those criteria are taken as the basis in Azerbaijan, it will be a very small number: “Still 90 percent of exports gas and the rest if it is oil products 10 a part of the percentage falls on the share of small and medium enterprises. 20 this situation has not changed for nearly a year. Again, a significant part of the budget is related to the oil factor. This means that small and medium enterprises have not yet become the backbone of the economy in Azerbaijan.”

According to N. Jafarli, the main reason for this is the presence of problems in the legislative framework and monopoly: “Since a small number of large companies are dominant, small ones cannot enter the market. Until 2016-2017, there were 26,000 small neighborhood shops in Baku, but now their number has halved. Several large supermarket chains have opened in every neighborhood, and small supermarkets cannot compete with them. “When we look at the production area, we see that small and medium-sized entrepreneurs do not have much sustainable power.”