100 Steps Towards An Enabling Investment Climate

The conference “100 Steps Towards An Enabling Investment Climate” took place in Moscow on November 16 with participation of government representatives, heads of major state-owned companies and businesses, and representatives of the expert community. Philip Ryabchenko, BIEL senior partner, was involved in the conference as a member of the ASI Expert Council. The conference “100 Steps Towards An Enabling Investment Climate” was called upon to look into the problems of improving the investment climate in Russia and to propose solutions to address them. On November 16, the conference gathered representatives of working groups for roadmap development and monitoring at the National Business Initiative, experts, investors, state-owned company CEOs, business community leaders, heads of local governments, and representatives of federal executive authorities.

A lively discussion took place at the round table “Infrastructure: Obtaining Permissions for Construction and Power Connectivity” with participation of the Senior Deputy General Director of Rosseti PJSC. Simplification of bureaucratic procedures regarding power connectivity of buildings allowed Russia to be rated higher in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2016 rating. Moreover, according to the director of the Foundation for Power Development, this progress was visible not only in the two capital cities but also in provinces. As a confirmation, he reported that Moscow customers can now become connected to power networks not later than three months, something that takes three visits to competent agencies (rather than nine to ten in the past), with power companies now able to provide services to customers via Internet. The Senior Deputy General Director of Rosseti PJSC observed that outdated regulations would slow down the connectivity process and that active cooperation with executive authorities was underway to address this issue. He reported that not all constituent entities of Russia were involved in the process of coordinating bureaucratic procedures with Rosseti PJSC.

Participants to the conference “100 Steps Towards An Enabling Investment Climate” agreed that there was a need to coordinate decisions simultaneously and at various levels.