More and more foreign businessmen working in Russia are seeing positive changes in the country’s business environment. According to a recent survey by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) and FleishmanHillard Vanguard (Orta Communications Group), 33 percent of foreign investors now give positive assessments of Russia’s entrepreneurial climate - a 10 percent increase compared to 2016.
At the same time, the number of those who criticize the current state of doing business in Russia and give negative feedback has almost halved: From 53 percent in 2016 to 22 percent.
“The assessment of Russia’s business climate by foreign investors has reached 2013, pre-crisis level,” says Elena Fadeeva, general director of FleishmanHillard Vanguard and president of Orta Communications Group.
Among the key problems that investors named as hampering business activity in the country are a lack of qualified personnel (67 percent), corruption in state apparatus (56 percent), and administrative barriers (48 percent). Political uncertainty - the most mentioned negative point after the 2014 crisis - is no longer mentioned as a main factor: Only 14 percent of respondents listed it among the main obstacles for business in 2017.
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