MOSCOW, December 28. / TASS /. Over 85% of Russian entrepreneurs positively assessed their experience of interaction with partners from China, Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Entrepreneurs' Rights Boris Titov said on Tuesday. Titov, who co-chairs the Russian-Chinese Friendship, Peace and Development Committee, referred to a poll the committee conducted in December. Managers and owners of 1,012 companies from 85 regions of Russia, who have experience of cooperation with entrepreneurs from China, took part in the poll.
"According to the poll, 85.7% of Russian business owners assess their personal experience of interacting with Chinese partners as positive, despite the difficulties. However, only 16% of entrepreneurs have experience in creating joint companies with Chinese partners," Titov said at a plenary meeting of the committee in Moscow.
He added that only 14.3% of respondents reported negative experiences.
The majority of business owners (37.6%) noted that the main area of their work with China is the import of goods and services, another 35% - their export. The main sphere of cooperation between the entrepreneurs from Russia and China is trade (29.3%), while industry ranks second (22.2%). It is followed by agriculture (10.5%), transport (4.3%), construction (3.8%), medicine and pharmaceuticals (3.4%), tourism (3.1%) and others.
Partnership development prospects
The poll also showed that 84.3% of respondents are optimistic about the prospects for developing relations with China, the business ombudsman said. This is largely due to the fact that "over the past two years, 33.6% of Russian entrepreneurs have seen a significant increase in the turnover of goods and services with Chinese counterparties or it is gradually growing." Another 42% replied that their turnover of goods and services for the same period was decreasing (26.6%), and 15.5% of respondents had completely stopped doing business with Chinese partners.
According to the respondents, the main conditions for the development of partnership are "the removal of restrictions introduced in connection with COVID" (61.7%), "improvement of logistics" (60.8%), "export support" (42.1%) as well as "special electronic services to support entrepreneurs".
"I am convinced that it is in the area of small and medium-sized businesses that cooperation between Russia and China has enormous potential. The purpose of the committee is to work on the removal of the barriers the entrepreneurs are talking about," Titov concluded.