The South Urals Chamber of Commerce and Industry Union (SUCCI) was founded in January, 1992, by the largest enterprises of the Chelyabinsk Region interested in the formation of a modern industrial, financial and trade infrastructure. According to the Law of Russian Federation "On Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Russian Federation" the SUCCI is a non-government, noncommercial organization uniting the enterprises and businessmen of the Chelyabinsk region and is the largest one in the Ural Federal District. The chamber’s organizer and its irreplaceable leader is the SUCCI’s president Fyodor Lukich Degtyarev.
Now the SUCCI unites all the types of business activity, ranging from small business and private entrepreneurs to the city’s and the region’s large industrial enterprises, uniting in its ranks more than 610 economic entities. The share of the small business representatives is almost 70%.
The SUCCI has a ramified system of its divisions. The representations of chamber have been opened in the People’s Republic of China, France and Germany, in 12 cities and districts of the Chelyabinsk area.
From among the members of the SUCCI 17 public formations (committees, commissions, councils) have been formed. For the development of priority directions of activity of the SUCCI’s public formations, strengthening and development of interaction between them, perfection and introduction of new directions of work in the chamber a council on coordination of work of public formations has been created.
The agreements with the Government and Legislative assembly of the Chelyabinsk region signed in 2005 have allowed to actively express and stand up for the interests of business community of the region, to be engaged in an equal dialogue of business and authorities. For the expansion of interaction with the state and municipal bodies of authority, the regional branches of federal structures the SUCCI has concluded more than 50 agreements on cooperation.
Detailed plans of joint measures are developed annually with the purposes of realization of those agreements which allows the SUCCI together with representative and executive bodies of authority of the Chelyabinsk region to solve the key tasks of social and economic development of the region, including those in legislative and law enforcement processes; to participate in the development as well as in realization of majority of the regional and municipal programs.
The South Urals Chamber of Commerce and Industry Union remains to be one of the few territorial chambers of Russian Federation which has certified the system of quality management under the international standard ISO 9001:2000.
The SUCCI has established strong partnership connection with the World federation of trade chambers. In September, 2003 at the 3rd World congress of chambers in Quebec city (Canada) the chamber has occupied the third place in the nomination "Best international project". Such a success had not been achieved earlier by any chamber of commerce and industry of Russia.
For the promotional support of the enterprises of South Urals’ production to other regions of Russia and abroad the SUCCI annually organizes the trade and economic missions, business meetings and receptions of foreign delegations, exhibitions and fairs. In the last two or three years there have been successful trade and economic missions of the region’s enterprises to Panama, Czechia, Austria, Japan, Australia, China, Brazil, Kazakhstan. The SUCCI has been visited by the ambassadors, general consuls of USA, Great Britain and Germany, as well as by representatives of business circles of Italy, Japan, Slovenia, Hungary, Southern Korea, Romania, Finland, France, Austria, Czechia and other countries.
Since 2000 a full-color magazine "Business Messenger", bulletin "Express Inform" are published. Those are periodic printed editions in which the consultative and information materials on urgent matters of business activity, image articles and promotional materials of the South Urals Chamber of Commerce and Industry Union members, news about the activity of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Russian Federation and the SUCCI are placed, the business and commercial information is published.
Thus after 17 years of its existence the SUCCI has become an integral part of the mechanism promoting the development of South Urals economy. Today it is a fully developed structure which consistently protects the interests of business community at all levels.