The Baltic Business Forum opened in Kaliningrad region

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Small and medium-sized businesses in the Kaliningrad region are showing steady growth, having already formed a third of the gross regional product. The sector employs more than 260 thousand people. These figures were announced at the opening of the Baltic Business Forum.

Alexey Besprozvanikh, Governor of the Kaliningrad Region, said that the region confidently ranks fifth in Russia in terms of the share of SMEs in GRP.

One of the key support measures that made it possible to achieve such results was the Vostok Invest program, which was relaunched in 2025. She offers businesses in the central and eastern municipalities preferential loans from 5 to 100 million rubles at 5% per annum for up to seven years. For agriculture and tourism, the rate is reduced to 3%. The funds can be used for investment purposes - from the purchase of equipment to the construction of commercial real estate.

Ten projects worth over 700 million rubles have already been approved under the program, which attracted more than 964 million rubles of private investment.

Within the framework of the Baltic Business Forum, an agreement was signed with the Association of Clusters and Technoparks for the development of industrial clusters and interregional relations. Experts and the authorities also agreed to regularly monitor the effectiveness of support measures every six months in order to quickly adapt them to new economic challenges.