MOSCOW, RUSSIA - Moscow World Trade Center’ aid in assistance to Russian companies in building their business on international markets was discussed on air by WTC’ General Director Vladimir Salamatov and Deputy chief editor, chief of the economics policy department of publishing house "Kommersant" Dmitry Buturin. The interview took place at St. Petersburg International Economic Forum– 2014.

Buturin: In your opinion, in which countries your position is the strongest?

V. Salamatov: Latin America, especially Brazil, China, India, Republic of South Africa. Our companies supply surprisingly huge range of products to those markets. Of course, volumes of these supplies seem rather vague compared to export volumes in general, yet we don't consider them insignificant either. We have time for this type of business organizations as well. We will try to find new outlets for them since we have our own unique world trade center’s network (more than 3 hundreds centers in 100 countries). We want to use the resources of this network alongside with our trade missions and enterprises that already work with the Russians abroad. I can give certain examples of successful work via this network.

Buturin: Do you think it will be easy to share responsibilities equally between your development program and analogous programs of trade missions that are going to be launched by Ministry of Economic Development? There is obviously no point to compete.

V. Salamatov: We are doing our own work. We claimed to provide trainings in regions of the Russian Federation and we did it getting positive feedback together with requests for advanced courses that we have recently developed and certified in RANEPA. This is why we have no intentions to compete whatsoever. This market is way too big and complicated; on the contrary we have to team up and combine our efforts. That is exactly what we do. Nowadays small companies with a workforce of 20-30 people in reality have the same work volumes as big ones when it comes to accountancy, book-keeping, dealing with local tax offices, etc. As the matter of fact, half of their work concerns rather these spheres then main point of their business function. We ought to create the most advantageous conditions for this type of business branches. What does it take? First of all we should not get in their way. We have to remove the barriers and obstacles fixed by fiscal regulating organs in deed and not in name. We also want so to say handle “the WTC issue”. We feel responsible for involvement of these so far small companies into special information database that will help as to understand their needs, the way we could assist them in finding new outlet areas on commercial basis. It is crucial to transform these small companies with sales income 10—30 million rubles into much more massive enterprises.

We are profitable and sustainable company. Our main income is gained via leasing of business premises, carrying out various events (including political ones), work with catering facilities of all kinds etc. It has been 2 years already since we started task-oriented assistance to world trading. What does this include? As soon as the Russian Federation had entered the WTO we opened consulting and training center “Russia in the WTO”. People who actually have experience of participation in the negotiations on Russia's accession to the WTO and were engaged in trade disputes dossier registration process, specialist who had developed protecting measures for Russian trading companies were highly involved.

These specialists are able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the WTO instruments for the companies that want to explore world markets notwithstanding unjustified boundaries it may meet as well as protective measures from unscrupulous foreign competitors. It is pleasant to note that these lectures were appreciated by Ministry of industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. Four deputy ministers and directors of all divisions attended the seminar. We worked with representatives of Tatarstan, Udmurtia and Krasnoyarsk governments likewise with great number of businessmen. Recently year and a half training period and commercial courses for all comers have come to an end. Today we are on verge of new working stage that implies targeted assistance. What is the main challenge we meet? I believe the dialog between business structures and government has been established by now; there’re public authorities and CEOs who have been dealing with upcoming matters for a long time already. I do agree that the effectiveness of their cooperation is rather high. But at the same time the representatives of business associations first and foremost take in consideration and advocate the interests of key rollers whereas a great deal of small companies is left out in the cold. The main goal of our new project is to take care of these companies. We’ve found a solution and I hope in the next 3-4 days we will officially announce the start of the project.

Buturin: You want to work in the consulting market for small business, including foreign trade. What does this specific area demand?

V. Salamatov: In my view, organization of working process abroad, including cooperation with our trade missions and embassies is not a problem for big enterprises nowadays. While for small business even working in Shanghai for example is fraught with many obstacles. They will encounter such problems as the necessity of language trainings, legal support; that means they won’t be able to orientate themselves on the market. At the moment we have database on many countries with private traders who are ready to provide appropriate services to small business. In addition, we have close relations with representatives of embassies, trade missions, the Chamber of Commerce, which has opened offices in all countries that are key players in the world arena. We would like to set all these wheels in motion. On the surface of it the idea appears quite simple, yet it is very difficult to implement. That is why we suppose that by starting now we would have analyzed the effectiveness of our work by the next year. I am absolutely sure that we will achieve positive results in this direction.

For more information on this article, please contact Yulia S. Ivanova, WTC Moscow, at YSIvanova@wtcmoscow.ru.