Entrepreneurs Set to Strike :: Charter'97 :: News

Although the non-state sector of economy was formed in Belarus over a decade ago, the authorities and private entrepreneurs, as spouses in one family, couldn’t avoid conflicts. For this reason the businessman have to get down to such tools as one-day cessation of trade.

Ahead of the action the journalists met with the head of the Department of entrepreneurship of the Minsk city hall Alexander Kalinovsky and chairman of the city council for entrepreneurial development Viktor Moiseev. In the beginning of their conversation Alexander Aleksandrovich reminded that there are over 65thsd private entrepreneurs and 27thsd private firms registered in the country. Private businessmen provide for two thirds of all country’s retail turnover, while Minsk budget is filled with extra 600thsd euro every month from the traders at local fairs. Out of last year’s incoming money to the city budget, over 35% fall on the non-state sector of economy.

However, the journalists were mostly alarmed by the issues, associated with the upcoming entrepreneurial protest, during which the city dwellers will have to waste extra funds buying stuff from more expensive state sellers. Soon, said Kalinovsky, they will move the trade to the specially designed places – trade centers and supermarkets.

Alexander Alexandrovich said that the more supermarkets the city builds, the less space rent the entrepreneurs, employed there, will pay.

Viktor Moiseev was far less optimistic, assuming that the entrepreneurs’ state is way worse than it seems at first glance. Take taxes, for example. The heaviness of this burden “lifted” our country to the third place in the world’s black rating. The public organization, headed by Viktor, cannot really influence at this stage the legislative base development in Minsk and Belarus. For now they can only soften the negative follow-up of the state decisions.

Hours are left before the businessmen’s strike. Will it help them to be heard indeed? The only promise voiced for now by the state servants is that they will quickly reregister them from “individual entrepreneurs” into “legal entities”. By May 1, they say…