Bortnik tightens his belt
Ivan BORTNIK: "The volume of funds of the Assistance Fund was cut by a third"Help STRF.ru:
Ivan Mikhailovich Bortnik, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Fund for Assistance to the Development of Small Forms of Enterprises in the Scientific and Technical Field, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor.
In which industries, according to your estimates, did the economic crisis affect small innovative enterprises the most?– We at the Foundation do not feel that the crisis has carried out a strict selection in the areas of scientific and technical sphere.
All small companies have problems. Many are starting to hold payments, the turnover of money has increased several times, it is difficult to attract bank funds. By the way, we proposed in the government, as part of anti-crisis measures, to create a state compensation fund that would reimburse small companies for loan rates. Now they have increased to simply unacceptable figures: about 30 percent per year.
And has the number of applications for state support from innovative firms decreased due to problems with finding private co-investors? After all, this is, for example, one of the conditions for continuing participation in the START program…– Oddly enough, not yet.
The flow of applications for state support in the second year of the START program is at the level of last year, under the START-Invest and Myrosoft-Business-Start programs — even more than last year, almost several times.
Has the amount of the Fund's funds been sequestered due to the crisis?– We expected that the cuts in state programs to support small businesses (in particular, this applies to our Fund) would be less severe, taking into account the general political line.
But it passed at the general level: on average by 30 percent. Today we have actually returned to the 2008 budget. Of course, we did not accept this decision. The management of the Fund and personally CEO Sergey Polyakov are trying to achieve its revision. In the meantime, we will save. But not at the start and not at the U.M.N.I.K.E. START in a crisis situation, from our point of view, is generally the most useful program. But previous plans to expand and develop other programs will have to be frozen. We are talking about the launch, and about the "Development", as well as about the pace, INTER…
Michael is found, STRF.ruPortal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru