By Vestnik Kavkaza
At the end of last week the presidents of Russia and Egypt agreed to an extension of trade and economic cooperation between the two countries, including increasing Egyptian agricultural product imports to Russia by 30%.
Vladimir Putin and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi agreed that it was necessary to build cooperation between Egypt and the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan and to launch a simplified access regime for Egyptian products on the Russian market. The sides also discussed cooperation in the military and energy spheres.
Dmitry Sazonov, a member of the Public Chamber, the chairman of the small and medium-sized business commission, thinks that Russia has rather open policies in relation to the outside world, to foreign markets… The partnership with our longtime partner Egypt in the field of food safety is a good way of interaction and of products entering our markets. Certain protectionist measures open up a niche for these products. It is a measure that will definitely facilitate the rapid replacement of products the access to markets of which has been limited, which fell under sanctions.”
“The second aspect of this process is the chance to be exploited by our Russian producers to take advantage of the protectionist measures introduced. In this regard there is also a number of issues that are important and need to be considered. In the first place, the willingness of the owners of small and medium-sized businesses to rapidly prepare themselves for entering these markets. They have to slightly change their structure and the quality of their own work. This primarily concerns the weak points of small business. I am talking about logistics, access to markets, cooperation,” Sazonov noted.
According to him, the state in relation to small and medium-sized businesses can undertake such efficient and useful measures as the simplification of access to resources and primarily to land; creation and maintenance of a unified database of farmland; increase of access to these resources on the part of entrepreneurs, because currently there are serious issues with the timing, approvals of the allocation of these lands, with the overgrown state of these lands. “They are not taken care of and if an entrepreneur does not carry out active industrial activity on this land it has to be used for sowing crops, to be put on the market so that other businesses could gain access to this land. It is also about giving an opportunity to obtain long-term and cheap funds to invest them in the means of production in order to get a finished product. For example, let us look at the canned-fish industry. There is a real chance right now. You have also probably heard about Rosrybolovstvo's initiative to impose restrictions on certain kinds of canned fish. These measures have to be strengthened by giving a direction to our businesses, our manufacturers, including direct investment and available loans,” Sazonov thinks.
