What state support measures are not working today and why? This issue was discussed during the republican conference “Small and medium enterprises development is in focus of President”.

Deputy chairman of the Board of Atameken National Chamber of Entrepreneurs  Olzhas Ordabayev noted that more than 50 measures of state financial support of business are operating, but they require updates. 

 “We have planned an assessment of the effectiveness of all measures. In particular, it is now planned to introduce changes to the Business Roadmap program. It's time to get offers from business. We see that not all support measures bring the expected results for the economy,” Olzhas Ordabayev said.

  Atameken launched a survey to find out which support measures are not effective enough today and what business needs. Over four days, 660 businessmen shared their opinions.

Thus, according to the analysis, support in the form of grants, subsidizing loan rates and leasing, subsidizing the development of livestock breeding is in the highest demand. The least effective in business opinion are such tools as: reimbursement of costs for improving the efficiency of production organization; reimbursement of the costs of subjects of industrial innovation; cost recovery to the subjects of industrial innovation activities aimed at the development of territorial clusters and others.

Rahim Oshakbayev, director of Talap, Center for applied research , believes that monetary policy does not have the desired effect. The expert came to such results, analyzing the outputs of Business Roadmap 2020.

“We can call Business Roadmap a subsidiary program, when we use fiscal policy measures, that is, we simply subsidize the interest rate by taxes and transfers from the national fund. These subsidies are not received by entrepreneurs, but by banks. In fact, it can be called “bank subsidies,” Rahim Oshakbayev noted.  

Thus, according to the expert, the state is struggling with inefficient monetary policy, which does not give a low interest rate, but provokes devaluation expectations, and is trying to help the business at the expense of the budget.

According to the analysis of the Talap center, the coverage of the Business Roadmap 2020 program is quite low, only 0.4% of all business entities. It helped 13 thousand out of 1.5 million business entities.

 “Everything and everyone is subsidized, this is not a normal situation. The key conclusion:  Business Roadmap 2020 program is a dysfunction of the current monetary policy. Business Roadmap 2020 program, which we have to complete successfully next year, has four indicators: bringing the share of the manufacturing industry to at least 12.5%, increasing the output of SMEs and so on. e. There is a certain risk that three of the four indicators will not be achieved,” Rakhim Oshakbayev said.

Deputy of the Mazhilis of the Parliament of Kazakhstan Nurzhan Altayev supported the speaker. He noted that none of the indicators on the development of the agro-industrial complex was achieved, and agriculture did not become the driver of the economy and it did not support the share of agriculture in GDP at the same level.

According to Nurzhan Altaev, the key problem of the development of the sector is the saturation of the business with cheap loans.

 “The Ministry of Agriculture needs to solve this problem together with the National Bank. KazAgro National Holding is a single window through which only farmers can receive funds today and this is wrong,” the deputy said.

 Nurzhan Altaev stressed that due to the constant changes in the conditions of subsidies, the business does not have time for changes in the program. Myrzakhmet Uksikbayev, an expert of the National Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, pointed out the same fact.

According to the speaker, it is necessary to revise the requirements within the framework of state support for small businesses, since today the method of “pointing from above” is used, while businesses need to be given additional opportunities.

In turn, Rakhim Oshakbayev noted that the business has developed a consumer attitude towards loans, although in Kazakhstan the cheapest gasoline, Internet, water and land in the world - the whole system of cross-subsidization.

The business community noted that second tier bank are not interested in financing a business, due to the fact that the collateral is situated in rural areas and has no value for banks. As an alternative, entrepreneurs proposed to consider the option of participation of banks in business development as venture funds, when the bank supports business, including start-up projects at the initial stage.

In order to assess the effectiveness and relevance of state support instruments, Atameken NCE RK launched the Internet resource pikir.atameken.kz, where every entrepreneur can leave feedback on the measures of existing programs. Based on the responses of entrepreneurs, the National Chamber will draw up proposals for government agencies to improve state support measures.