business

If the needs of economy are long ignored, the ability to create resources necessary for maintaining or even improving our standards of living will be lost. The politicians – whether the ones in Slovakia, in foreign countries or in institutions of EU – should finally acknowledge several basic priorities vital for business.

The Entrepreneurs Association of Slovakia has already submitted a document to the Minister of Economy which includes 40 bureaucratic absurdities that were previously identified by both entrepreneurs and the lay public under the patronage of the Bureaucratic Nonsense of the Year project.

I can already see the ironic grins, since I suggest creating new bureaucracy to fight bureaucracy. By applying this suggestion, however, no new administration would be created. The existing one would be reorganized so there would be a clearly assigned authority and responsibility to accomplish this important priority.

With Lithuanian Parliamentary elections approaching, Lithuanian MPs like magicians are pulling out of a hat same old populistic laws. Once again they are trying to push through an old and already bashed suggestion that prohibits people from working on holidays.

Businesses in Ukraine want the customs procedures to become less income-focused and instead, to be aimed at facilitating trade. As the 2015 survey of Ukrainian businesses by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting showed, changes in trade regulations and customs rules are needed to boost international trade.

According to the Business Tendency Survey, a quarterly survey of industrial enterprises in Ukraine carried out by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (Kyiv), the biggest obstacles to production growth in Ukraine in May 2015 were low demand, liquidity problems, excessive taxation, and unstable political situation.

The real problem of the minimum wage concerns a very different group of people. Yet you will not see these people in newspapers or TV and they are not part of government negotiations at all. They are the unemployed people. Hence, what economists argue as some “redistribution problems” between employers and employees is not at the core of issues with minimum wage.

2014 passed under the sign of decreasing unemployment and increasing employment in Bulgaria. Although a big part of the population still hasn’t felt the benefits of these favourable tendencies, they are not only present in the leading economic centres, but also in some of the smaller regions of the country.

Unlike in the EU, where SMEs are among Horizon 2020 priorities, in Ukraine the role of SMEs in innovation and S&T development is underestimated on the policy making level.

The ongoing conflict and economic downturn have taken a toll on Ukrainian businesses across the sectors and sizes. For them, the current political and market uncertainty would make a zero-growth scenario look like a positive development, which, however, is not yet in sight.