THE CURRENT ENTREPRENEURIAL CLIMATE IN RUSSIA

The most serious obstacles in the way of Russia’s economic development have to do with this country’s underdeveloped market institutions and institutional environment, and an unfavorable entrepreneurial climate. The stagnation in the Russian national economy is indicative of the business community’s evident lack of confidence in the future. The RF President has set the goal – to improve Russia’s ranking on her ease of doing business from 120th to 20th in 2018 (Doing Business, the project launched by the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank). The Doing Business rating specifically ranks the economies in 10 areas of business regulation. The importance of removing excessive barriers is self-evident. But is this measure alone sufficient for forging confidence and making businesses alter their current behavior? An analysis of the existing negative features of the entrepreneurial climate, including those reflected in international rating systems, has revealed the true, much larger, scale of that problem. Stagnation has its roots primarily in the insufficient protection of property rights, rampant corruption, and the lack of a truly independent judicial system. By looking at Russia’s current rankings, one may estimate the degree of this country’s backwardness. Its economic potential thus can only be improved by means of a systemic upgrading of the existing institutional environment, starting with its most backward components.