JRL NEWSWATCH: “Russia’s small businesses left out in the cold by Covid-19” – Financial Times/ Henry Foy

Cash, Calculator, Pen

“Local service-sector enterprises flounder in an economy dominated by large industrial groups.”

“… the Kremlin … [must] demand two seemingly opposing outcomes: maintain restrictions to smother the world’s second-largest number of Covid-19 infections and lift a lockdown [that is shrinking GDP] …. [with] [s]mall and medium-sized businesses … trapped in … between. … forced by … Putin to pay salaries [in April] … while … suspending … operations[ and n]ow … subject to almost daily changes to local rules … [while] waiting for state financial grants [far smaller than those in the West] …. Russia’s economy is dominated by large industrial groups and natural resource exporters. … [S]mall and medium enterprises account for … a fifth of GDP … [yet] are a critical … [to] the service, hospitality and retail sectors, … significant [urban] employers … [With] the fall in oil prices and the domestic lockdown, Russia’s GDP contracted by 28 per cent in April [according to] government data … [E]conomic activity is down by almost a third compared with March. …”

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