The Head of State set the goal of increasing the share of SMEs in the economy to 35% by 2025. According to statistics, the share of SMEs in GDP already exceeded 36% last year. Since the beginning of 2022, the number of active SME entities has grown to 1.9 million units, or by 38%, including a 1.5-fold increase in the number of individual entrepreneurs — by 450 thousand.
However, the quantitative growth of SME indicators is not accompanied by qualitative changes — growth in formal employment, incomes and productivity. The positive dynamics of business activity is largely related to business fragmentation. On the one hand, business is under pressure from inflation — prices and, accordingly, turnovers are rising. On the other hand, the VAT threshold has been lowered from 30,000 to 20,000 MCI.
"Regulation from a clean slate", the renewal of tax administration, the new public procurement system and the reform of state support measures are aimed at improving the business climate. At the same time, the asset recovery process has been launched, state participation in the economy is not decreasing, and an increase in the tax burden is under discussion.
A serious problem for SMEs is the instability of the tenge exchange rate and the financing deficit. Over the past 12 years, lending to legal entities has fallen from 25.1% to 8.4% of GDP. More than 70% of companies have no business loans. At the same time, retail lending to individual entrepreneurs at rates of up to 56% per annum is growing.
- How is small and medium-sized business doing?
- How can SMEs survive in a crisis? How can the state help SMEs?
- How can the business climate be improved?
These and other questions will be discussed in a panel discussion.
The second part of the round table will feature an open lecture on the laws of spiral dynamics in the context of business. Spiral dynamics is a progressive model describing the development of organizations and corporate culture. It is applicable at any scale: to individuals, groups and companies, countries and society as a whole.