Opinions & Interviews

Call to continue work on business climate in Belarus

MINSK, 20 December (BelTA) - It is important to continue the work to improve the business climate in Belarus, Chairman of the House of Representatives Vladimir Andreichenko said at the closing of the fifth session of the House of Representatives of the sixth convocation of the National Assembly of Belarus, BelTA has learned.

“We need to continue the work on cultivating a new business environment. We need to work continuously to make the tax legislation more capacious, transparent and understandable to economic operators,” Vladimir Andreichenko said.

Taking into account the proposals of the business community we seriously overhauled the Tax Code, simplified many administrative procedures, the order of interaction between taxpayers and the tax authorities, and slight decreased the tax burden on economic entities, the speaker informed.

During the session, we took several serious steps to decriminalize economic crimes along with the efforts to create more favorable conditions for economic activities, Vladimir Andreichenko said. For example, such concept as pseudo-entrepreneurship has been removed from the Criminal Code. The thresholds of damage when criminal liability applies have been increased substantially. In addition, economic crimes not representing a great danger to the society, committed for the first time, will not entail such punishment as imprisonment. This has been done primarily to make sure that small errors made by small and medium-sized businesses do not become fatal for entrepreneurs and company officials.

The session focused on the issues of attracting foreign capital into the national economy and the development of public-private partnership. “Additional opportunities have been created with the adoption of laws related to investment, privatization, and transport sector. However, we already see new areas in these sectors which we need to focus on,” said Vladimir Andreichenko.

The ability of the Belarusian state to address matters related to the improvement of economic wellbeing, development of a stable environment for long-term investments has been gradually becoming more and more important in the light of the growing tensions worldwide. That is why, in the recent years Belarus has been frequently chosen as a venue to discuss serious issues on the regional and global agenda, the chairman of the House of Representatives added.

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