Business news

MINSK, 11 March (BelTA) – Belarus intends to gain a foothold in the top 30 countries in the World Bank’s Doing Business ranking by 2020, BelTA learned from Piotr Arushanyants, Director of the Entrepreneurship Department of the Belarusian Economy Ministry, on 11 March.

“We have a concrete plan of 40 measures and indicators that will allow Belarus to reach the top 30 countries in the Doing Business report and possibly close to the top,” noted the official.

Piotr Arushanyants stated that if all the plans were implemented in one go, Belarus would be ranked seventh. “We have used the so-called rating calculator offered by the World Bank. The country could be ranked as high as seventh. But we understand that all these measures will have to be implemented by 2020. In the period other countries will not stay idle,” explained the Director of the Entrepreneurship Department of the Belarusian Economy Ministry.

In his words, the share of small and medium private enterprises in the country’s GDP is expected to reach 32% within the next five years. The workforce employed by private SMEs in addition to self-employed businessmen and hired labor will account for 35% of the number of Belarusians involved in the economy.

Plans have been made to correct the criteria used to register economic operators as SMEs in the foreseeable future. “We plan to put together a strategy to develop small and medium private enterprises till 2030 and get it approved by the end of 2017,” said Piotr Arushanyants.

The official said that serious work to improve administrative procedures has to be done. In particular, a digital registry of administrative procedures for private businesses will be created. A procedure to evaluate the regulatory impact will be introduced as well.