Businesses Protest Enterprise Estonia's New SME Focus
Until now, all applicants of Enterprise Estonia aid have been considered equally, but the state's private sector support agency is switching its focus to exporting SMEs, thus leaving out big business and, critics say, providing one less incentive for doing business in Estonia, ETV reported.
The proposed change of course juxtaposes the hype for start-ups with Estonia's dependence - as a small, open, export-reliant economy - on the few major companies it does have.
"Last week, we received a response for a project application that was turned down because, basically, our company is already getting by fine [...] This prompts us to consider taking our main activities out of Estonia, to countries where we are treated equally with other companies. One concrete example is Latvia,“ said Katja Ljubobratets, director of communication for BLRT, a major Estonian-based shipbuilder.
Margus Kaasik, CFO of Eesti Energia, the state-owned power company, said the criteria for state aid should be project-based and should take into account the impact on the Estonian economy, not the company's size and resources.
"They should not differentiate based purely on the fact that one company is a bit more successful and is perhaps capable of financing development activities without aid,“ Kaasik said.
The list of critics extends to the leadership of Enterprise Estonia itself. Supervisory board member and MP Andrei Korobeinik argued against the new strategy, saying that major companies produce the most added value.
"This direction is not beneficial for Estonia in the long term. I hope there will be more debate about this in the supervisory board because, despite the fact that we recently had a meeting, I found about the new strategy from [the media] and I really hope that the supervisory board discusses this soon and I personally will not support it,“ Korobeinik said.