Russian Export Center
At present, Russian economic policy measures are more
focused on the development of full-cycle local production and production with
high added value. Speaking at the recent session of the State Council devoted to
import substitution held in Nizhniy Tagil President of Russia Vladimir Putin
noted: “The goal is not to substitute the imported goods with domestically
produced ones in one way or another. Support should be provided to projects able
to compete with foreign analogues on equal terms – both by quality, and by
price.”
The sales appeal on the world market is one of the key factors of long-term
economic growth. But competition on foreign markets is not just a comparison of
price and qualitative characteristics – it is also a competition of export
support systems, which governments offer to non-raw-materials exporters.
Today, many agencies, development institutions and organizations – Ministry of
Economy, Ministry of Industry and Trade, Finance Ministry, FAS, FCS,
Vnesheconombank and others — are involved in activity aimed at supporting export
in Russia. However an exporter lacked a single counterpart who would become a
starting point for Russian manufacturers striving to reach the global market.
For that reason, the Government of the Russian Federation decided to establish
the Russian Export Center (REC) to operate in a single window format to support
producers and provide their access to the most complete set of services for
supporting export activity.
The Center’s range of services development was based on a principle of
conformity to the stages of export project life cycle. Otherwise, it is an
arrangement of routing and support of requests submitted to governmental
structures, rendering organizational and consulting, training and informing, and
financial services. The basic idea of the Center is to combine the state
opportunities with the client-oriented business approach. Such approach will
promote creation of favorable environment for the development of Russian export.
The Center has already started to work both with experienced and with starting
exporters independently on their volume and industrial specialization.
The financial block of REC is represented by the tools of Vnesheconombank Group.
In the nearest future, RECIIA and Roseximbank will be moved under REC corporate
management and thus the financial “wing” of support is to be created.
Integration of REC, RECIIA and Roseximbank will help, first of all, to exclude
duplication of functions, secondly, to reduce the volume of document
circulation, and thirdly, to save the time of all participants of export
activity. In order to establish efficient interaction of REC with RECIIA and
Roseximbank, a special end-to-end business process will be arranged, while all
the clients who have addressed REC, RECIIA and Roseximbank, will be included
into an integrated client base.
In order to implement non-financial measures of rendering assistance to
exporters, the Center will cooperate with partners and service providers in the
key spheres of interaction. A model of obtaining the state support and the
scheme of payment for services rendered through outsourcing will be developed.
Potential spheres of interaction shall be: protection of intellectual property,
legal support (including abroad), and logistics. Skolkovo Foundation, RBC and
the Scientific and Technological Valley of the Moscow State University could be
potential partners of the Center.
In spite of the fact that REC operates for only few months, it has already
succeeded to buildup a portfolio of more than 100 projects in automotive,
agricultural, aviation, mechanical engineering sectors, the sectors of
nanotechnologies and microelectronics, etc.
The Russian Export Center has chosen a way of direct communications with
business. Meetings with representatives of industrial organizations and
individual exporters are arranged on a regular basis. One of REC’s goals is the
accumulation of market information and transmitting business urgent requests to
governmental structures. In order to find the most demanded requests it is
planned to arrange regular quantitative and qualitative assessment of export
environment. The first research project is devoted to the transportation and
logistics sphere of export activity. REC engages the widest possible audience of
businessmen in its studies, which allows it to involve, on the one hand, new
clients to work with REC, and on the other hand, to use the accumulated base to
continue research in the future. Such an approach, together with regularly
arranged studies, helps to monitor the dynamics of export support system
development, and to obtain digital data of the results of work of all federal
executive authorities involved in the support of export, and to elaborate
recommendations for their further works in this sphere.
Besides, REC plans to carry out active educational activity. Thus, the first
major educational project of the Russian Export Center will start in spring of
2016. It is not just a plan of regional seminars or a series of webinars, but it
is a full-fledged systemic software product, which will include two key
opportunities for the regions:
- Opportunity for starting exporters to obtain knowledge needed to start their
export activity.
- Opportunity of professional development for employees engaged in regional
infrastructure of export support.
Mini-MBA format was chosen for the program, which stipulates a practice-focused
approach. Advisers competent in various spheres are engaged to develop and
implement the programs, which gives an opportunity to create a really
high-quality educational product. Training will be arranged in the full-time and
remote modes, which will help to cover many regions within a short time period.
Currently the Center is selecting pilot regions for the project approbation.
The urgency of the educational project was stipulated by the fact that one of
the main challenges the enterprises faced in their export activity was the lack
of knowledge in the field of foreign trade activities – it was especially true
for the regional companies. Regular surveys of businessmen confirmed high demand
for and motivation to training.
