Debt to Gazprom to be worked off by Belarusian business :: Charter'97 :: News

The unregistered organization of Belarusian businessmen ”For Free Entrepreneurship” declared its intension to go on strike all over the republic .As the head of the entrepreneurs’ association Viktar Garbachiou reported to the “Nezavisymoya Gazeta” the strike is due on 1 September. The strike is caused by dominance of the checking and monitoring bodies .Their visits result in huge penalties for the entrepreneurs .The entrepreneurs are checked by the tax, sanitary and fire inspections, by the department for economic crime prevention.

“They do whatever they like. They take away everything earned by the people and carry it to the shops which trade confiscated goods. The people’s goods being confiscated, they are often taken to the hospital with heart attacks. Sometimes even suicides happen”, Garbachiou told the Nezavisymoya Gazeta.

Moreover, among the businesses mostly exposed to such “violence” in Belarus are regional businesses. The work of several markets in the Minsk, Homel and Brest regions was paralyzed .According to Garbachiou ,the checks are often started at the Russian-Belarusian boarder ( the goods which are usually checked are imported from Russia).The entrepreneur says the people with video-cameras wearing masks stop busses , demand certificates and if the certificate is not available the goods are confiscated. According to Garbachiou, to get the certificate under the present conditions on time is next to impossible.”It takes the regulatory body around a month to test goods and if the goods are seasonal the demand for them will expire”, he says. Who needs t-shirts in autumn?” The entrepreneur also particularized that the goods may then be sold out without any certificate of its quality and safety in specially designated shops of confiscated goods. Those shops, by the way, are under the supervision of the economic department of the president’s administration.

According to the entrepreneurs’ leader, 18 towns of Belarus where there were cases of goods confiscation are to take part in the strike.

The entrepreneurs specify that last several weeks they didn’t start working less legally than they had used to, but they associate the intensification of the law –enforcement bodies’ activities due to the required repayment of the debt to Gazprom.

The experts in economic sphere mention another possible reason for the state authorities to become dissatisfied with the entrepreneurs. The thing is that most of the entrepreneurs sell imported goods (80 %, according to the economic ministry of Belarus).The first deputy prime-minister of the Belarusian government Uladzimir Syamashka remarked that 90.6% of the imported consumer goods account for the Belarusian small traders. The negative international trade balance after the energy resources price-hike grew sharply and has already approached USD 2 billion regardless of the government intensions to make it positive amounting to USD 500million.Due to the above-mentioned the government does its best for restricting the import.