Strategies of the Development of Entrepreneurship and SME

primarily in large companies in gas and oil industry, and again large machine-building, andchemical corporations. The upper scale interest of international investors is seen to the largefood companies of all the trio countries. Not only economic situation and political stability butcountry’s capacity for cooperation with the neighbors, and fundraising on international marketwould contribute to the growth of the investment opportunities for the SME sector. The firsttwo factors are the most favorable for Russia, but Ukraine, and then Moldova are leading inregard to the third one. In the framework of our research we would consider the growinginternational investment opportunities to be more valuable in future but at the current stage ofthese transition economies’ development not significantly affecting the countries’ situation inSME sector. The domestic financing opportunities for SME businesses are seen as more critical.The interviews with the leading countries’ authorities prove the understanding of a need forincreasing the SME sector financing opportunities trough the private banks, variousfoundations, corporations, and even budget funds. But the sources used vary a lot. Analyzingcurrent situation we would state that there some very light signals of the change of economicpolicy in Russia towards the increasing independence of the economy from the oil and gasprices on international market, and more attention of the state to the SME sectordevelopments. On 24 October 2007, the new Chief of the Russian Federal Ministry of EconomicDevelopment and Trade, Elvira Nabiullina, has stressed out that the goal is to increase thenumber of SME start ups from around 50,000 per year to 100,000 in 3 years. This ambiguousgoal could be achieved by the combined efforts on local, municipal, and state levels byneutralizing the negative factors, building on positively affecting the small businesses, andpreparing the basis for the further involvement of the currently neutral factors. There is a hopebased on this data that at least Russia is entering the other stage of its economic developmentby gradual switching from “large corporations” economy to the growth through SME sector. Thenumber of researchers, criticizing Moldova, Ukraine, and primarily Russia for the lack ofsupport for the so called “balanced” model of economic growth, probably do not take in theaccount the enormous problems raised in these countries after the crash of the integratedSoviet Economy. The economic crises put the countries’ abilities to experiment on growthmodels down, and focused all of them on the largest possible revenues in a short term. Themanagement in a severe crisis does not support the long term oriented activities before thesurvival is not questionable. The image of reorientation towards the “balanced” economy wouldbring Russia incredible benefits (if it would be consistent enough in building this imageinternationally and domestically). In comparison with the other 2 countries of the trio, Russiahas an extraordinary favorable potential factor which would positively affect the investing ofSME businesses.The last group of factors presents an international and global trends and their influenceover the country’s developments in SME sector. The major one is an international competitionin the area of SME products, where China is suppressing the other emerging and transitioningeconomies. International integration, especially in the European region, facilitates the positivetrends for each group of factors but increases the competition as well. All of these 3 countriesat the very first stages of transition to the market economies were pursuing the strictprotectionist policy changing with their more extensive cooperation through the WTO.Interestingly, protectionist position of all the three countries was not so strong in relation to theproducts/services of SME sector (excluding agriculture) as in the in the industries traditionallyrepresented by large businesses. The global competition is a significant pushy factor from onehand, and a strong down holding factor for the underdeveloped SME sectors from another one.International business theory states that the negative effect of global competition at the veryfirst stages of the lifecycle of the organization/industry/sector of the economy development ismuch stronger, while it turns into a positive side later.With the growing opportunities of offshoring and outsourcing the SME sector could boost thecountries’ economy in several years. The key for success is the country’s legislative andpolitical openness, educational and technology development level, liberalization of the69