My name is Winston Jerome Lindsley and I am a partner in the General Motors Dealership in Krasnoyarsk and also have a software development laboratory there. About a week ago my home town of Fairfax Virginia launched a program to promote Russian and American small business development with the city of Krasnoyarsk. There are 2 sides to this process and let me start with the Russian and then move on to the American end.
Among many of their talents, Russian Scientists have a strong background in Mathematics which is essential in creating the algorithms needed in the development of IT software. But Russian software companies are not obtaining its proper share of the U.S. IT software development market given their superior human resources and ability to perform in this market sector. When small business owners, on both sides, take control of the process and employ our entrepreneurial skills we bring creative marketing and business ideas for our customers overseas as well as their own communities in Russia. The model we use to turn a scientist into an entrepreneur is simple. We make sure we have skilled business person as our partner, in the position of ownership and management and then we pay our software developers a flat 25% right of the top, of every dollar the company earns. Paying salaries based on performance provides economic justice for everybody and is a very successful practice for everyone in our business.
Over the past ten years I have assisted in the start up of over 20 small businesses throughout the Former Soviet Union. Some of those small businesses are now big businesses in Russia today. All of the U.S. investment for the start up of these companies came from my own pockets and of my American partners, private investors that took no ownership in the Russian companies. My company in Virginia owns 85% of a significant piece of Krasnoyarsk property and the building our GM Dealership is housed in but I am not an owner of any shares of the company. Our business model has been extremely successful because we supported the process of building Russian companies for Russian people and we take our repayment from the profits the business earns in the form of commissions while the debt is outstanding and as long as we are participating in the process. It is a pioneering effort that eventually we grow out of and move on and let the Russian owners, take over control and operations.
Probably one of the least known facts about Russia today is that small business is the shining star of progress in the economic transformation taking place. The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development has lent $520 million to small businesses throughout 50 cities in Russia, The largest being 125,000 and the smallest being just $30.00. Even with the economic uncertainties following the August 98 meltdown, the repayment rate has stabilized and is now over 97 percent. Those figures, which I also have experienced in the 100 million dollars we extended 1 dollar by dollar, deal by deal is the power and the glory of free enterprise at work. 97% repayment rate. That's the message Russian small business owners are telling to all of us in the rest of the world. I think the nuclear cities should follow this example and work to promote independent privately Russian owned small businesses. Almost all of the approximate 100 employees we employ in Krasnoyarsk work on some type of commission basis. I've been successfully and profitably working in county since 1991 without any government assistance except for 4 SABIT grants that has amounted to less than $25,000. As a matter of fact, for the last 10 years the roof over my head, the food on my table and the car in my garage have all been paid for from the pockets of thousands of hard working Russian people who are my customers or the distributors I serve. And every dollar I have earned have come only after the profits have been received from the Russian owned businesses we support.
Now let me move on to the American side of this equation.
I also belong to a group of Russian owned companies in Fairfax County here in the USA. And the message we want to convey to businesspeople of my country, the United States is that the perception the mass media and most American people have of Russia is wrong. Russia is a safe place to do business and Russia is a profitable place to do business and as a matter of fact Russia is an excellent place to do business. Yet the Russian business community continues to be pounded on with negative reports that we believe portray an image that is false and untrue. I have with me an article in last Sunday's Washington Post that clearly states a story about a Russian land owners position on owning real estate. The article states he has, AND I QUOTE: cash to buy, but not enough faith. "If I invest today and it's taken away tomorrow, it would be a total loss," end of quote. My company owns a significant piece of real estate with our building we renovated and I have never worried about having it taken away tomorrow. This endless type of reporting is the sadly perverted product of modern American journalism and I just wonder why the Washington Post feels it necessary to portray Russia in such a negative manner.
Our government and the dedicated employees, some of whom are here today have done a terrific job in trying to assist US exports to Russia and Business development.
This is not a problem we can blame on our government. This is a failure of our mass media and our people to respond to meet the unique challenges posed by the break up of the Soviet Union.
8 years ago, Russia saw the U.S. as both their model and their most important partner in world affairs. The conclusion of a poll published 3 months ago found that of the 650 Russian politicians, journalists and business leaders consider overwhelmingly that China is Moscow's most important strategic partner. The United States of America came in a mere 6th place with 20 percent.
The City of Fairfax and the Central Fairfax Chamber of Commerce are promoting a grass roots efforts within the small business community to address this problem.
We know there is a problem that needs our attention and that by our wealth and our prosperity demonstrates we know how to run a business and that is exactly the kind of assistance Russia needs and it is profitable.
It's not that we're smarter than the Russian people because we're not. They have much greater skills in science and math. What the Russians tell me they need from our small business community is our entrepreneurial skills. Our creative marketing and business ideas about creating products and services for their communities. They want to know how our Chambers of Commerce works.
I'm very pleased to announce that The City of Fairfax and the Central Fairfax Chamber of Commerce have partnered with the City Administration of Krasnoyarsk, Siberia and my company the International Technological Information Consultants (ITIC) of Fairfax in a joint venture to sponsor a Russian/American small business development program. Highlighting this unique program will be the creation of bilingual web sites to foster trade and development between the two cities. Ms. Elena Kopersak, a Russian intern sponsored by the Special American Intern Training (SABIT) program of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is working in Fairfax city for three months to manage the web sites' development.
Ms. Kopersak, Commercial Development Director for the Krasnoyarsk public relations firm "Krasny Yar," will translate information about Fairfax businesses into Russian language for use by the Krasnoyarsk business community. We are also translating information about Krasnoyarsk businesses into English for the Fairfax business community. All of this information will be posted on the web, and the sites will be located under the Chamber web address (www.cfcc.org for English and www.cfcc.org.ru for Russian language).
My partners in Krasnoyarsk could employ 1000 Russian Scientists from the nuclear cities today and deploy them to peaceful profitable means of employment, if we, and many of our other Russian competitors, could convince American companies to give us the work, like they have been doing in India. And you can throw as much money at this problem as you want and it is not going to solve the problem because this is not a financial issue. We need a change in attitude in the misinformed American public. Because Russia is a good place to do business. Anybody who takes a look at the small business community in Russia will see the success of this sector in the Russian economy. But small business doesn't have the big dollars to sway public opinion or governments opinion and therefore our issues have not been recognized.
The American Chamber of Commerce did a survey of American business executives working in Russia and they asked: What is the Number 1 problem in working in Russia today. The answer will probably surprise you. It wasn't the Russian government, it wasn't Russian taxes and it wasn't the Russian Mafia. The number 1 problem was in relating with their counter parts back home in the United States of America.
Small business development is not a process of olagarts, princes of densities or national ambitions it is a process of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers who will render their faithful service in this process but whose names will never be none whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a battle of the unknown warriors, who strive without failing in faith or in duty but has made the greatest progress in lifting the dark curse of the poverty of our age. I come here today to lift the flag of small business armed with the real and the true facts of this process and in opposition to those both American and Russian who seek to make us the object of their aggression. In view of American public opinion and current US - Russia relations ours is a tattered flag that lay stricken on the battlefields of US-Russia economic progress that is now being filled by nations such as China, but be that as it may, American public opinion will never overcome the progress for which the Russian small business community has set its heart.