By Andrei Skvarsky.
Promsvyazbank, one of Russia’s largest private banks, has carried through an online project to popularise the role in the country of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by posting photos and brief descriptions of successful businesses and pictures of their founders and managers.
The Business in Focus project, launched this summer, featured 57 success stories from 22 Russian cities. A wide range of industries and occupations were represented, including sewing children’s clothes, manufacturing swimming pools, making honey, hairdressing and skin care.
“Promsvyazbank has a long and successful record of work with small- and medium-scale businesses, and it is important for us that this segment should keep developing,” a statement from the lender quoted its chief executive, Artem Konstandyan, as saying at an exhibition of photos of successful entrepreneurs which was the final point of the project.
“The aim of this photo project has been to raise the prestige of enterprise. We have had the task of telling by means of photos what Russian small-scale businesses are like, and I think we have been successful.”
Andrei Sharonov, rector of Moscow’s Skolkovo School of Management, described SMEs as making up “the most promising segment” of today’s Russian economy.
“It is small- and medium-scale entrepreneurs who create the majority of jobs. It is also one of the liveliest segments, a sector where emotions are bubbling and great exploits are performed, and where people know how to celebrate success and how to withstand trials,” Sharonov said at the exhibition, which was held in central Moscow.
Promsvyazbank partnerered with several entities to pull off Business in Focus.
It main partner was SME support group Opora Rossii (Support of Russia). The others included the Skolkovo School of Management and SMP, a state bank for SME development.
Reuters cited Konstandyan as saying last week that Promsvyazbank, Russia’s 11th largest bank by assets, believed its corporate loan book might grow by around 30% this year on demand from major Russian companies that cannot borrow in the West because of the Ukraine-related Western sanctions.
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