MOSCOW, February 14 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian Ministry of Economic Development plans to unveil the first annual key performance indicator (KPI) rating of business and investment climate in Russia’s 83 regions in 2013, the Prime news agency reported on Wednesday citing Deputy Economic Development Minister Sergei Belyakov.
The rating will be compiled on the basis of interviews with regional businessmen and data from Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), Federal Tariff Service, Energy Ministry, Central Bank, Federal Highway Agency (Rosavtodor) and Agency for Strategic Initiatives.
“A permanent monitoring of this kind will help to gain a clear understanding of the situation…, of how the business community perceives the effectiveness of measures that are being implemented,” Belyakov said.
The criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of governors’ work to improve business climate until 2018 were approved last fall.
The ministry has laid down a set of 21 criteria to evaluate the performance of governors, including how entrepreneurs estimate the region’s general business climate, workforce productivity, salary growth, the quality and accessibility of roads and other transport infrastructure objects, yearly direct investment growth, costs and accessibility of power lines and so on.
“We are now preparing proposals to determine target indices which a region’s head should achieve year by year. This issue is quite complicated and requires a serious re-assessment of performance by regional heads and ministries,” Belyakov said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in early 2012 that Russia must join the group of the world’s top twenty countries offering the most convenient conditions for business compared with Russia’s current 120th place. He also called for a KPI system to be introduced “to assess personally each head of ministries and departments.”