The attacks of the 11th of September have certainly delayed the reprise of the world economy, and particularly the American one. But they didn’t succeed in completely derailing it: there are still financial areas that, precisely because of this event, have seen their situation improve. First among all, Eastern European regions; for these areas, there are prospects of development.In the wide sector of the emerging European countries a lot of attention, especially from the Italian SMEs, is concentrating on Russia, Poland and Hungary. The key market remains, in any case, mostly Russia, one of the few emerging economies with a budget and result of current orders surplus. GIP’s forecasts for 2001 are of a 5 % growth. The stock market has earned profits for the whole year despite the terrorist attacks and the worries concerning the Argentinean crisis, which have had a domino effect on the other emerging countries.
Many Italian SMEs, particularly Lombardy based, have already experimented the Russian market, also owing to the Russian Agency, a non profit consortium society created by Regione Lombardia to assist SMEs during their entry in said market.
A figure, nevertheless, emerges from the experiences of the first small enterprises that have undertaken investments in the ex-soviet republic: the difficulty in pin pointing the right partner; although the number of Russian SMEs is very high, and growing, only a small part seems to possess that enterprise culture that enables them to dialogue with foreign partners. This is why an enterprising adventure in Russia cannot do without consultancy from boards that know those financial realities well.
June.2002
Institute for foreign commerce (In Italian)
