Terry Rogers posts an interview with Yury Yekhanurov, chairman of the parliamentary committee on industry and entrepreneurship, about developing small and medium sized businesses.

???????Will small business develop in the current police state system? My neighbors, who work at a market, have to pay kickbacks to the police and the tax people, on top of the rent. This way you can go bankrupt in no time at all.???????

???????This is commonplace in a state that is corrupt to the bone. Even during the elections we estimated that 5.8% of the popular vote would be stolen owing to the administrative resource. The same is true of business: every businessman is forced to factor in bribes into his costs. In order to prevent this, we have to dismantle the system of permits that are used in this country. We are drafting a bill to abolish over 1,500 types of mandatory permits.???????

???????What else will the government do to make the life easier for small and medium businesses????????

???????Parliament is about to pass a bill that will classify businesses by categories: a micro business with up to 10 employees, a small business with up to 50 employees, and a medium business with up to 250 employees. For them we will retain the single tax system and simplified financial statements (monthly or quarterly), to prevent officials from harassing them. The government will keep the local authorities in check, making it easier for such businesses to lease or buy business premises, such as vacant premises of mothballed industrial enterprises and ground floors of buildings in the city. Information on their lease and sale will have to be posted on the Web sites of all local governing bodies. The authorities will openly discuss their decisions and publicize all projects two weeks before they are approved. In this connection, businessmen should decide who will be defending their rights. Since it is difficult for the authorities to reach out to individual businessmen, civic organizations of entrepreneurs will obviously emerge en masse. Their lawyers and financiers will be able to push for the revocation of unfavorable resolutions.???????

Interesting, though not surprising, that they calculate that costs of bribes into the prices of their products. That’s economically rational. But it makes me wonder if the hundreds of millions of dollars — or more — spent on lobbying in the United States forces consumers to pay higher prices as well.

Dan McMinn has more on the investment situation in Ukraine. Looks very promising. And by that, I mean I wish I were a mega conglomerate capable of investing billions of dollars.