Using banking statistics to assess the SME sector in the Russian Federation

With the development of technologies for collecting, processing and storing data, many countries started to upgrade the systems of official statistics, complementing it with big and administrative data. One of the most detailed and operative sources of data on the economy is banking statistics. The article presents the results of a comparative analysis of the data of the SME Growth Index, formed on the basis of the data of Sberbank, and the data of the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation. The analysis showed that the data of banking statistics correspond to the data of the Federal Tax Service of Russia both in the distribution of observations in various sections (regions of the Russian Federation, size of the business), and make it possible to more quickly obtain data on the state of the sector, and can be used both for analyzing the SME sector and forecast parameters of its development. Based on the analysis of banking statistics for the 3rd quarter of 2020, the effect of “the sector whitewashing” and an increase in deductions on insurance premiums and personal income tax due to a decrease in the rate on insurance charges for SMEs from 30% to 15% was revealed. Further analysis based on data from the Federal Tax Service of Russia also confirmed this conclusion.