INFORMATION ON DUMA ROUNDTABLE

The roundtable on entrepreneurial legislation was held on February 15, 2002 at the Heraldic Hall of State Duma of the Russian Federation of Federal Assembly. It was convened upon request of CIC Committee on private entrepreneurship development, small & medium business members and experts of US-Russia Small Business Working Group.

The roundtable chairs were: Georgy V. Boos, Deputy Chairman of State Duma, Dmitry O. Rogozin, Chairman of State Duma Committee on international affairs, Sergey N. Katyrin, Vice-President of the Chamber of Industry & Commerce of the Russian Federation (CIC) .

State Duma deputies, representatives of Presidential Administration, federal ministries and agencies, US Embassy, USAID, World Bank, European Union, Eurasia Foundation participated in this roundtable.

On behalf of US-Russia Small Business Working Group (SBWG) and CIC Committee Veniamin Sh. Kaganov, AMM Vice-Rector, delivered remarks on document entitled "Small Business Legislation Priorities". He proposed to debate it and recommended profile State Duma committees to take it as a basis when developing small business legislation in 2002.

Among the discussion participants were: I. Grachyov, State Duma deputy; V. Pleskachevsky, Chairman of State Duma Committee on property; V. Plotnikov, Chairman of State Duma Committee on agrarian issues; A. Sharonov, Vice-Minister on economic development & trade; A. Egorushkov, Deputy Minister for Antimonopoly Policy & Support To Entrepreneurship; K. Armstrong, Director, Office of Business Development & Investments, USAID/Russia; E. Vasilyeva, Senior Project Officer, Eurasia Foundation/Moscow Office; K. Gaustov, Chairman of Mutual Crediting Society; A. Fontana, TACIS Coordinator; V. Ermakov, President of the Russian Agency for Small & Medium Business Support.

Delivered proposals were highly appreciated by roundtable participants. The special emphasis was placed on the positive role of US-Russia SBWG experts as well as findings of conferences (October 2001, December 2001) organized under US Government support within the framework of SBWG activities. For the first time a single approach was proposed with regard to small business legislation issues. Besides, a precedent was created when business associations' initiative was strongly supported at such a high official level.