Irkutsk govt, Interfax will work together to cut non-payment

The government of Irkutsk region has signed a deal with Interfax on working together to improve transparency in the economy and reduce the level of non-payments.

Interfax will work with the regional government to develop an electronic data exchange system on payment discipline and individual entrepreneurs within the framework of Interfax‘s SPARK Payment Monitoring project.

Companies and individual entrepreneurs working in the region that become participants of the project will have instruments at their disposal to reduce past-due receivables and evaluate credit risks.

The regional government can monitor changes in payment discipline in the region and track the impact on different factors.

"Implementing the agreement will increase the level of confidence between companies, improve payment discipline in the region, help develop efficiently operating real sector companies, develop commercial lending, help build an early warning system for accumulating risks in the Irkutsk regional economy," Interfax Board Chairman Mikhail Komissar said.

A circle of potential organizations to participate in the project will be selected and a pilot information system on payment discipline in the region devised. Later on there will be a full-scale program with analytical products.

The payment discipline monitoring platform already works successfully in various regions around Russia.

Exchanging information on counter agent payment discipline is a generally accepted practice and most major foreign companies, both developed and emerging, use it. Similar programs are already in place in over 40 countries around the world, helping to develop the lending market and make business more civilized and transparent.

In Russia the system operates on the basis of SPARK - the biggest information and analytical system for Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which processes over 100 million requests annually.

SPARK Payment Monitoring is the first system in Russia that provides online up-to-date analytical information on the risk of payment delays from organizations, regions and sectors. The system is based on analyzing information on timely or non-timely payments.

The system already has information on the payment discipline of over 150,000 companies and individual entrepreneurs from different regions around Russia.

Interfax is one of the largest private diversified information groups in the CIS. It is an acknowledged leader on the Russian information market in the B2B segment. It creates professional products for the press, government agents and politicians with the help of modern IT solutions.