The Performance of De Novo Private Firms in Russian Manufacturing

This paper considers the current performance and future prospects of newly-established private manufacturing firms in Russia, using information gathered in a mid-1994 World Bank survey of 439 Russian industrial firms, including forty-odd de novo private firms. The paper finds that in terms of most performance indicators, de novo private manufacturing firms look significantly better than their state-owned and privatized counterparts. They are actually growing rather than contracting, operating at higher levels of capacity utilization, expanding employment rapidly, and investing more. Their outlook for future performance is similarly more positive, with higher expectations for growth of output and employment, and more planned investments. In most cases these differences appear to be inherent to the de novo character of the firms and cannot be attributed to their size, location, or the industrial sector in which they operate. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role which these dynamic enterprises are likely to play in the recovery of the Russian economy.