Russia’s Female Entrepreneurs Get Big Boost From President Putin’s Woman’s Day Speech
Fewer unscheduled inspections of entrepreneurs, import phase-out as a way to encourage competition and building technology parks. Today Vladimir Putin held a big speech in Samara on business outside Moscow. On the eve of March 8, the President met with female entrepreneurs, and then he continued discussing the key issues at a meeting of the supervisory board of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives to Promote New Projects (ASI), which is in charge of the most important projects.
Dmitry Petrov is reporting.
The Samara bakery and confectionery complex has worked non-stop since its foundation in 1988. In this bread production shop, these 4 of 6 production lines are as old as the complex itself. Dough is molded manually. These 2 lines are new and automatic, with touch-free molding. Of course, bloomer bread, long loaf and wheat bread are as tasty as those made on the manual lines. The flour is local, made of the Samara grain. Most employees started working together 30 years ago. For example, it was Svetlana Susova's first job after school. Since then, everybody in Samara has certainly tried her bread.
Svetlana Susova, bread baker: If memory serves me right, I've worked as a bread baker for about 18 years.
The President also tried the Samara bread.
- The bread is special, it's with raisins, dried apricots, we call it fruit bread.
- Delicious.
Then Putin tried a few more buns and the Boyarsky bread. Tasting could take a long time.
Lydia Eroshina: These croissants were the first we brought to Samara. And when an Italian was eager to supply his margarine, we said that our croissants were good, we didn't need it. He asked to show him. We gave him our croissants. And then he replied that we should sell our croissants in the center of Paris.
Lydia Eroshina has been the head of the enterprise for 23 years. It's safe to call her one of the most successful women entrepreneurs in the country. The President invited them to Samara on the eve of the holiday to talk about the future of Russian entrepreneurship.
Vladimir Putin: You have chosen a pleasant but dangerous place for our meeting. The products are so good I can't help but eat them all up! My best wishes on the International Women's Day. I am sure that we will have a business-like conversation, and I am a little apprehensive because you are practical people who come across problems in your work. But we will do our best – the acting governor and I, as well as our aides and the plenipotentiary envoy – we will try to represent the male half of humanity as well as possible today.
The ladies prepared well for the meeting with the President. I have 5 sheets of problems! And even more here! Anastasia Tatulova, founder of the country's largest network of children's cafes, asks Putin to pay attention to women's entrepreneurship. Many are simply afraid to start their own business because of administrative pressure. For example, scheduled inspections were canceled, but unscheduled ones started instead.
Vladimir Putin: We are now preparing a whole set of proposals, and I assure you that we will implement them all in near future.
Natalia Kaspersky, as a co-founder of one of the world's largest IT companies, focuses on cybersecurity. She speaks about various risk groups in social networks.
Natalia Kaspersky: We need to block such groups to prevent their proliferation. Criminal prosecution is necessary. Some people, crime kingpins, own dozens of groups on drugs and so on.
Vladimir Putin: Some time ago I noted it myself and covered it at the Security Council meeting. It's upon my initiative that the legislation has been toughened. When these ghouls are found... If only you saw these people promoting suicide among children! When police came to arrest one of them, he almost filled his pants. They are so... I'd say it were it not for cameras. Thus, of course, legislation is to be toughened. Calls for freedom on the Internet and so on might be right because we mustn't cross the line and suppress freedom. But society should protect itself and the children from what's going on there. Let's do it together. I'll do my best to help implement the projects you've proposed.
Svetlana Preobrazhenskaya develops agriculture in the Kaluga region. She specializes in dairy products. Her staff is only 70 people. But they produce fermented yogurt, kefir, pasteurized milk — more than 30 kinds of products — worth 300 million rubles.
Svetlana Preobrazhenskaya: That's what we need.
But Svetlana Nikolaevna has wider projects and is now thinking of ways to improve Kaluga people's living conditions.
Svetlana Preobrazhenskaya: A new swimming pool was twice on the construction program.
Vladimir Putin: I'll note it.
- But it was never built. Kozelsk is the city of the youth…
- There will be a swimming pool in the Kozelsk district.
- Oh, thanks!
Of course, import phase-out was on the agenda too, as it will help Russia abandon imports and create its own competitive products.
Vladimir Putin: "If we constantly cut down on it, we will never arrive at the final result. We never produced helicopter engines, for example, Russia has really never done it. But 2 plants have been opened, and they almost fully replace the previous production. A tome of what we didn't but should produce is that thick.”
When it came to start-ups, the President was asked in which field he would set up a project.
- What would be beneficial not only to you, but the country we live in?
Vladimir Putin: It's public administration.
- And if it were a start-up?
- Well, public administration is to be improved, and I mentioned all the start-ups in my address to the Federal Assembly.
By the way, the initiative to build a new stadium in Samara is also Putin's. In the summer of 2014, he personally laid the capsule in its basement. Now it's the final stage of the construction of Cosmos Arena. Works are scheduled to be completed in late March.
- We rely on the contractor to fulfill these obligations.
- OK, and you are to control the process.
In the Samara region administration, Putin chaired a meeting of the supervisory board of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives to sum up the Agency’s performance in the past 7 years.
Vladimir Putin: Thanks to the ASI, children’s technoparks, or quantoriums, have opened in 37 regions. The Atlas of Emerging Jobs has also proved popular. By the way, we plan to expand the quantorium practice to a total of 51 Russian regions this year. The Ticket To The Future project will also receive one billion rubles from the state budget. It will be launched in the next academic year.
It is the strategic initiatives of the team of these young managers that helped lift many barriers to business, implement thousands of ideas, create new technologies.
Dmitry Petrov, Pyotr Ravnov, Sergey Arsenichev, Stanislav Ponomarenko, and Daniil Ekimov for Vesti from the Samara Region.