“Parking” vendors ready to take to the streets

Businessmen are ready to protest because of rise in rental costs.

A member of the Council for Entrepreneurship Development in Belarus, the chairman of the Council of Self-employed Entrepreneurs at Parking, a trade center in Minsk Katsyaryna Chyzhyk (Ekaterina Chizhik) said to BelaPAN that businessmen of Parking are ready to take to the streets and protest against the surge in rental costs.

As said by her, back on March 27 owners of Parking informed self-employed entrepreneurs that the rent would be tripled since April 1: from Br 415 thousand to Br 1 mln 180 thousand per square metre.

However after on March 29 the president signed Decree Nr 150 “On Some Issues of Renting and Free Use of Property” owners reviewed their position and decided to increase the rent to 85 Euro per square metre (about Br 920,000).

As Chyzhyk explained, according to the decree, formation of the rent charge for trade places at markets and trade centres owned by private persons are carried out in line with the Civil Code by agreement of the parties. “And the owners of Parking decided to increase the rent considerably,” the businessman noted.

As said by Chyzhyk, owners of the trade centre handed out the businessmen supplemental agreements and imposed the rent of 85 Euro per square metre. And besides, self-employed entrepreneurs were informed that failure to sign the supplemental agreement would cause termination of the lease contract unilaterally. “We were given time to pay until April 5,” Chyzhyk explained. Despite the demands of the renter, a meeting of entrepreneurs adopted a decision to pay the rent in accordance with the agreement signed by the both sides for a year, until December 2012, where the rental cost is Br 415,000.

However, owners of Parking informed businessmen that the sums paid in accordance with previous rates, would be considered to be utility payments, and would not be considered as rental costs for trade places.

Chyzhyk calls the actions of Parking trade centre owners total lawlessness. “They are owners, but do they have a right to increase the rental costs so much suddenly, though the agreement had been concluded for a year?” she asks.

As said by her, “the rental costs imposed on individual entrepreneurs are absurd and are extremely detrimental for small business.” Parking was interested in enlargement o trade places. As a result, each entrepreneur today rents trade places of 15-20 square metres. Considering the new rent, the expenses are huge,” Chyzhyk states.

Businessmen of the trade centre do not want to tolerate this situation, and they have filed a complaint to Minsk City Executive Committee and the deputy head of the Presidential Administration Andrei Tur.

As said by Chyzhyk, for the time being, the entrepreneurs have stopped work and they are ready to start street protests in order to attract attention of the society and authorities to the problem of renal costs.

“However, it is hoped that we would be able to settle the problem amicably. In fact, we do not want to protest now, everyone wants to work under reasonable conditions,” Chyzhyk stressed.