On October 25, 2016, in the Conference Room of Holiday Inn Hotel, the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Support Center (SMEDS) and the Entrepreneurship Development Foundation (EDF) in the framework of the Micro-Enterprise Support Project held the round table dedicated to the presentation of results of the face-to-face survey conducted among 1000 small businesses in the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan". Entrepreneurs, representatives of public unions, and experts attended the training.
Sabit Bagirov – Chairman of the Entrepreneurship Development Foundation made opening remarks at the round table.
Then, Ilkin Garayev - Director of Small and Medium Enterprise Development Support Center presented the results of the face-to-face survey conducted among 1000 small businesses to the participants of the round table.
Ilkin Garayev noted that 1000 small businesses from Baku, Absheron, Ganja-Gazakh, Shaki-Zagatala, Lankaran, Guba-Khachmaz, Aran, Yukhari Karabakh, Daghlig Shirvan region took part in the survey. 9,4% of the interviewed respondents were juridical persons and 90,6% of them were natural persons.
The division of business entities by sectors was as follows: Trade – 30 % Service – 30 % Manufacture – 20 % Agriculture – 20 %.
Respondents expressed their points of view about the issues such as the current state of business, inspections, obtaining a license, real estate registration, National Fund for, Entrepreneurship Support, tax system, customs procedures, suspension of activities, permits for construction, awareness on legislation, development of private entrepreneurship, World Trade Organization and demography.
Only 20.4 % of the surveyed entrepreneurs obtained a license so far. 80.9 % of them, in other words, 165 of the respondents said that it was difficult to obtain a license. Respondents mentioned their main problems were procrastination in the relevant official body that issues the license, collection of documents from various government agencies to obtain a license, short duration of a license. For the reason not using e-tax payment, 56,4 % of respondents answered that paying taxes in the traditional way is easier for them. 66,4 % of respondents consider that the number of tax forms must be reduced for a better change in the tax system. 10.8 % of the surveyed entrepreneurs, in other words, 108 respondents said that they are currently engaged in foreign trade operations. 4.8 % of the respondents, in other words, 48 entrepreneurs said that they closed their company in the past.
Round Table ended with discussions on the results of the survey.
Presentation: Results of the second survey conducted among 1000 small businesses (Ilkin Garayev - Director of Small and Medium Enterprise Development Support Center)
