BISNIS – Business Information Services for the Newly Independent States – is a Washington-based organization that assists U.S. companies in finding partners in Eurasian countries. Since its founding after the fall of the Soviet Union, BISNIS had been very successful in promoting U.S.-Russia economic relations. In April 2005, Russian-American Business correspondent met with the director of BISNIS, Tanya Shuster. 

- Tanya, could you talk about the beginnings of the BISNIS organization? How was it started and who were some of the individuals involved with it?

- BISNIS was established in 1992. We are a program of the U.S. Freedom Support Act – one of the many programs launched for economic development in Eurasia, including Russia. BISNIS works in tight partnership with U.S. companies. Our original director was a woman by the name of Linda Nemick. She was one of the key individuals in starting the program.

- You are entirely a government organization?

- Yes. The Freedom Support Act is an act by the U.S. legislature that creates our funding. In fact, it is the U.S. Congress that funds us. We are entirely a government program. Our funds are overseen by the U.S. State Department.

- What kind of services and what type of help do you offer to U.S. companies that want to work with Russia and other former USSR countries?

- We offer a range of very unique information services to U.S. companies. The first one – one that our customers best know us for – would be our market reporting as well as our leads. BISNIS can identify a number of leads in Russia and other Eurasian countries. The types of leads we source include U.S. export opportunities [our trades and tenders program], partnership opportunities [not just for investment but for other forms of long-term collaboration]. We also have programs that help U.S. companies that have found Russian or Eurasian partners to find financing. That program is called Finance Link. We have another program called Expo Link Eurasia that helps U.S. companies to inform potential Eurasian business counterparts about their activities. These all are just the leads. We also provide market reports. We have representatives in Russia. They are in a number of regions throughout the country, in places like St. Petersburg, Moscow, Samara, Nizhniy Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Khabarovsk, Sakhalin, and Vladi-vostok. They all are preparing market information. We also provide counseling and a range of referrals to U.S. companies. In addition we offer help to companies in Russia to help them form partnerships.

- Precisely in what countries does BISNIS operate?

- We operate in Eurasia – in Russia, in Ukraine, in Moldova, in the three Caucuses countries. In central Asia we are in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

- Most of the U.S.-Russia trade is done along the natural resources line. Is there a specific industry sector, with which BISNIS primarily works?

- BISNIS does not focus on just one sector. Of course, we have had very good results in the energy sector and the natural resource sector. However, BISNIS also had many successes in other sectors. We have identified – as they are called – high performance sectors. These include some of the fields that U.S. companies are known for. Examples are the automotive industry, construction, telecommunications, IT, medical services, and – increasingly – consumer goods.

- Tanya, you’ve given a very long list of industry fields where BISNIS was successful. Could you name some of the individual case of your achievements?

- We had a lot of success helping Russian and Eurasian small and medium-size companies. One example of success would be a partnership of a firm based in Washington State that supplies juice concentrate to a company in the Russian Far East. Another example – still in Russia – is a partnership between a U.S. supplier of education services and an organization in Nizhniy Novgorod. We also have – in the energy sector – a number of transactions that we’ve facilitated in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. The transactions we’ve facilitated in Eurasia are worth four billion dollars.

- You stated that you work with small and mid-sized businesses? Does BISNIS also support large companies? Do they have their own routes for finding partners?

- We do help large companies. Our emphasis, of course, is small and medium businesses. Large organization may have some resources of their own. Even with that, however, we do work with several large companies. They sometimes need help in identifying potential buyers or partners for projects. We don’t discriminate companies on basis of their size.

- With what institutions in the United States do you work together in providing your services?

- BISNIS collaborates with a very wide range of organizations. To name a few of the government programs, we work with the USTDA, the Trade Development Agency, the OPIC, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Ex-Im Bank. We work fairly closely with all three of those.

- Several moths ago it was announced that in December 2005 BISNIS will be slowly shutting down. Why was such a decision made by the U.S. government? Does this situation indicate that the climate of U.S.-Russia economic relations is becoming cooler?

- There is a complex answer here. First off, I must say that U.S. companies remain strongly interested in Russia and other Eurasian countries. Given Russia’s economic performance, it is currently one of the hottest retail markets in the world. There is much interest in it. How we ended up in this situation is that our source of funding, the Freedom Support Act, was never intended to be a permanent source of funding. It was a temporary or a transitional source. It started when the countries were beginning their transition to market economies. It was planned that the program will at some point phase out. In the last few years the decision has been made that progress has been achieved on a number of different fronts. The Freedom Support Acts was originally targeted towards a number of different areas: economic development, non-proliferation issues, health issue, technical assistance, to name several. Economic development became less of a priority given the achievements that have been made. It was therefore decided to cut back on some of the economic programs as funding was diminishing already.