OECD webinars

About 85 participants joined the webinar: representatives of government agencies and national companies of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, representatives of the private sector; international experts; representatives of the European Union, OECD, EBRD and other internationa.organizations.

On behalf of Kazakhstan, representative of Institute of Economic Research JSC participated in the videoconference.

The webinar was moderated by Alexander Surdej, Ambassador and permanent representative of Poland under the OECD, Chairman of the round table on improving the competitiveness of Eurasian countries. Professor Surdej noted the need to create conditions for the development of entrepreneurship in Kyrgyzstan, for which an important milestone has now come for the development of private enterprises.

The Head of the Cooperation Department of the EU Delegation in Kyrgyzstan, Charlotte Adrian, noted in her speech that the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the economy of Kyrgyzstan hard, thereby significantly affecting the activity of SMEs. The Government of Kyrgyzstan has established a working group on entrepreneurship, which together with the EU has developed 2 post-crisis plans. Currently, we are discussing which of the plans to implement.

Ms. Adrian said that the European Commission provides and will continue to support Kyrgyzstan in promoting the digitalization of public services and implementing green economy development initiatives.

Alymbek Orozbekov, Head of the Department of Economy and Investment of the Government of Kyrgyzstan, reported a slowdown in business activity of SMEs in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. The Government of Kyrgyzstan has taken anti-crisis measures to stimulate business activity (for example, postponing and providing installments for paying taxes; introduction of electronic fiscal reporting; submission of declarations postponed to 2021 (for 2 years); business lending).

However, ot also noted that not all measures to support SMEs were taken for implementation due to the lack of sufficient funds in the country's budget. According to the forecast of the Ministry of Economy of Kyrgyzstan, the GDP indicator is expected to decrease to -5.3%.

The third speaker who opened this webinar was the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Kyrgyzstan to the Kingdom of Belgium - Muktar Zhumaliyev. He shared information about the negative impact of the pandemic on SMEs, the country's exports and the fact that Kyrgyzstan will need time to recover the economy and support from the EU.

Special attention was paid to the speech of the economic analyst of the OECD Division for work with the countries of Eurasia, Talisa zur Hausen. The first speaker focused on the following points:

- due to the pandemic in Kyrgyzstan, trade volumes were significantly reduced, the number of unemployed increased, SMEs began to experience great difficulties in using public services in the realities of quarantine and emergency - the government of the country needs to create opportunities for contactless provision of services for SMEs and the population;

- as part of the completed review conducted by the OECD, it was determined that 250 enterprises play a dominant role in the SME market in Kyrgyzstan, the rest of the market is individual entrepreneurs.

Nuriya Kutnayeva, Director of the State Enterprise «Center for Electronic Interaction» under the State Committee for Information Technologies and Communications of Kyrgyzstan, spoke about the work of the system of interdepartmental electronic interaction «Tunduk». 64 state bodies and 38 commercia.organizations are connected to it. Through this system, 46 government agencies and 23 commercia.organizations exchange data among themselves; 619 services have been developed by government agencies. Data exchange between government agencies for 2 years in the period from September 2018 to December 2019 amounted to about 20 million transactions, while for 6 months in 2020 the number of transactions is about 23 million.  The Tunduk system was created on the basis of the Estonian system of interagency interaction «X-road», which was donated by Estonia.

Business Ombudsman Robin Ord-Smith told about the success of Kyrgyzstan in the field of digitalization, simplification of the procedure for obtaining permits. He expressed support for the country's initiative to develop the provision of public services online, as it will help in the fight against corruption by reducing direct contacts between representatives of business and public services.

Martina Wieczorek, an expert from the Department of small and medium-sized enterprises of the Ministry of Economic Development of Poland, shared her observations on the work of the OECD review and positively assessed the work of the Tunduk system.

Deputy Minister of Economy of Belarus Yuri Chebotar positively assessed the experience of Kyrgyzstan in the field of digitalization and briefly shared the success of the Republic of Belarus, where from July 01 there will be a transition to full electronic licensing, 112 business support centers have been created in 113 existing districts of the country, and each state body has created consulting councils for entrepreneurs. He also said that according to forecast calculations, the level of decline in GDP for 2020 will be 1.5%.

Adile Keshfetdinova, a specialist of the Public Services Agency under the Ministry of Justice of Uzbekistan, shared the experience of work of public service centers in Uzbekistan, operating on the principle of a single window. By the end of 2020, it is planned to provide about 160 public services online. Given that a large audience in the country prefers physical treatment, population service centers were built in Uzbekistan with the ability to receive 3,000 people a day. The Agency is maintained at the expense of 20% of the cost of services provided.

At the end of the speakers' presentations, an online test survey was conducted among the participants of the webinar on the following questions:

1. What kind of private services in support of entrepreneurship to the greatest extent contribute to enterprise growth?

2. What category of public services in electronic form is particularly necessary for business entities in the context of the coronavirus crisis?

For the first question, the majority of participants (45%) chose the answer «Market Access Services».

On the second question, the majority (64%) settled on the answer «Electronic tax reporting, declarations and payments».

At the end of the webinar, Professor Surdej noted a positive trend in the field of digitalization of public services to SMEs and the population in Kyrgyzstan.