RUSSIAN ENTERPRISE AND FOREIGN-TRADE

Since the disappearance of the State monopoly of foreign trade, Russian enterprises are having to face a world which is totally different from that to which they were accustomed. Having been so long cut off from the international market, access to it induced in them a state of euphoria. At their initiation into economic calculation, not all of whose aspects they had mastered, many firms embarked upon export and import ventures which were often of a speculative nature. and hazardous for them and for the economy as a whole (worsening of the trade balance, collapse of the rouble, etc.). The State was not long in intervening, encompassing the two aspects of foreign trade. While the transition to market economy implies freedom of exchange of goods, and therefore access to the world market, the existing situation and the short, sharp shock of the opening of this market called for a measure of supervision over certain transactions, and consequently a curtailment of the rights of enterprises. The conventional measures for control and direction of the flow of goods (licences, bans, customs duties and indirect taxation - VAT) duly appeared as instruments of economic policy. The latter continues its course by way of institutional measures through incentives to small firms and the establishment of free zones. Another aspect of the transition relates to currency flows, which are linked to access to the international market. Faced with the flight of the national currency, the government took steps to ensure the simultaneous granting of currency needed for imports, and the repatriation of currency obtained in payment for exports. These measures limiting the rights of enterprises, who are virtuosi in the art of evading regulations and controls. in an economy which is being restructured, have clashed with a fast-expanding parallel economy, founded on fraud, indeed corruption, and one which is helping to destabilize the economic situation of the entire country.