October 3, 2012. Starting from 2013, Sverdlovsk Region is going to subsidize its industrial and agricultural SMEs in order to compensate for the expenses occasioned by investing in energy efficiency and production upgrades, Sverdlovsk Region’s Press Service Administration reports.

The mechanisms that could support the SMEs in local industry and agriculture were discussed at Sverdlovsk Region Government’s meeting today. The main report was given by the region’s Economics Minister Dmitri Nozhenko.

He said that nearly 202,000 small and medium enterprises were operating in Sverdlovsk Region at the moment; these mainly deal in wholesale and retail trading and automobile, motorcycle, home appliances and personal demand item repairs. The share of such businesses comes to 45%. Only 10% are involved in industrial production and agriculture.

In 2012, Sverdlovsk Region’s Economics Ministry elaborated a number of additional instruments to stimulate the development of SMEs. For one, SMEs will be compensated for the investments they make in energy efficiency, new equipment or production upgrades, the costs of technological hookups to electrical networks, and the costs of paying off loans taken out from Russian banks for the purposes of construction or upgrades.