Russia to open hot lines for entrepreneurs amid coronavirus pandemic

Society & Culture March 19, 2020, 19:54

The number of complaints related to the spread of coronavirus has increased recently, first of all they come from enterprises working in tourism, hotel business and non-food retail

MOSCOW, March 19. /TASS/. Several state agencies in Russia will open their own "hot lines" to receive complaints from businessmen and to help them cope with the current difficulties and restrictions caused by the spread of coronavirus.

Opora Rossii, an organization bringing together Russian small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), plans to unite its regional hot lines for entrepreneurs in one to accept complaints, Alexander Kalinin, head of the business association, told TASS on Thursday.

"We are now planning to create a single hot line to receive business complaints related to the pandemic and we are going to announce its launch soon," he told TASS.

Kalinin said that currently similar lines are already operating in 64 regional bureaus of the association.

He noted that, the number of complaints related to the spread of coronavirus has increased recently. First of all they come from enterprises working in tourism, hotel business and non-food retail.

The Russian Export Center (REC) also plans to launch its hot line to support enterprises. REC’s senior vice president Alexey Kozhevnikov told TASS.

"Our center plans to open a call center to consult exporters on products and services in a remote format and to inform them on the situation on international markets," he said as uoted by the REC’s press service.

Kozhevnikov also noted that due to the pandemic, the number of business meetings and missions abroad is decreasing, which is of extreme concern to small and medium-sized businesses working for export. To solve this problem, RECs transfer many of such events into online mode.

On March 17, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov reported that the Russian government had introduced the so-called force majeure regime. That means that the government will not impose penalties on non-residents who fail to perform state contracts if their non-performance was caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

"We are introducing force majeure, which means that we won’t impose penalties in two cases: violation of state contracts and non-fulfillment of foreign currency contracts by non-residents due to coronavirus," Belousov said.

On March 18, Russia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industries launched a hotline to consult entrepreneurs on contract execution amid the pandemic. Head of the chamber Sergey Katyrin told TASS, that the Chamber also confirms force majeure circumstances related to implementation of contracts, including foreign trade agreements.

The outbreak of a disease caused by the new coronavirus was recorded at the end of 2019 in Central China. Later in spread to more than 140 countries. The World Health Organization recognized it as a pandemic. According to the latest data, more than 210,000 people were infected in the world, about 8,500 deaths were recorded. In Russia, 199 cases of infection have been registered.

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